Correspondence
Correspondence BROTHERS IN ARMS MICHAEL FUMENTO's "The New Band of Brothers" (June 19) deserves recognition as a benchmark description of the war in Iraq for its detailing of the bravery,...
...It takes a soldier to know and describe so well the upbeat acceptance with which our young men (and women) face the terror of war...
...Roads that cannot be kept under direct visual observation from the compound have been abandoned to the insurgents...
...According to Michael Fumento, like clockwork, 45 minutes after going out on patrol, U.S...
...forces will often be attacked by a sizable insurgent force...
...I don't think these journalists were hit by random mortar shells in their hotel rooms...
...Perhaps before basing his information on an interpretation of someone else's reporting, Fumento could have used his excellent play-byplay storytelling skills to visit and write about these Baghdad-based journalists to see for himself how they operate...
...And if that's not enough, simply plug the name of Iraqi cities other than Baghdad into Google News and see where the reporters are...
...SHELDON N. FEINBERG Mount Sinai, N.Y...
...Areas within the compound without armored roofs are no longer used due to bombardment by incoming mortar shells...
...BEN GILBERT Beirut, Lebanon MICHAEL FUMENTO RESPONDS: Although the compelling New York Review of Books article was actually extremely sympathetic to the reporters who rarely if ever leave their Baghdad hotels, I do in fact have firsthand sources in my piece who express frustration with the press corps...
...In the past six months alone, two western journalists in Baghdad were killed, one kidnapped, and three seriously wounded...
...IT IS DISCOURAGING to learn how far Americans are from being in control of the situation in Iraq more than three years after the mission was declared "accomplished...
...Citing the New York Review of Books to substantiate his view of the foreign reporters in Baghdad, he claims that Iraq is covered "mostly by reporters who hole up in Baghdad hotels and send out Iraqi stringers to collect what the reporters deem news...
...MICHAEL FUMENTO's account seems to me an accurate, detailed portrayal of the situation in Ramadi...
...That acceptance almost puts to shame those of us who cannot do more...
...Shouldn't we have more of a national debate on what is the most effective way to win the war quickly so that our troops might return to the States in the near future...
...Most Americans—at least here in the West—are not "antiimmigrant" simply because we expect the law to be enforced and a sane limit to be set on the number of legal immigrants...
...CARL MEZOFF Stamford, Conn...
...Correspondence BROTHERS IN ARMS MICHAEL FUMENTO's "The New Band of Brothers" (June 19) deserves recognition as a benchmark description of the war in Iraq for its detailing of the bravery, professionalism, and care for Iraqi cultural sensibilities that characterize the American response to 9/11...
...I just returned from a tenweek reporting trip to Iraq—my seventh trip in 18 months...
...It is, rather, the flood of illegal and unregulated "immigration" that concerns us...
...BRIAN J. TODD Bakersfield, Calif...
...Yet the White House and some in Congress label as "cutting and running" any suggestion that an alternate deployment of troops might be more effective...
...As I observed while in Baghdad, the vast majority of the press goes out every day in the capital...
...ILLEGAL BOARDERS JEFFREY BELL'S "The Coming Immigration Deal" (June 19) plays the same old deceptive game of grouping all new arrivals in this country under the banner of "immigrants...
...But I do not understand how he can rely on secondhand sources to continue to propagate the myth of the hotel-room-bound Baghdad press corps...
Vol. 11 • July 2006 • No. 40
