XDA

I admit that I was caught up in the Civil War panic after the bombing of the mosque in Samarra and had a moment of doubt and pain, but I'm feeling so much better after reading Ralph Peters, who is actually in Iraq, riding around with the 101st (no longer) Airborne Division, in this column today in the New York Post. One of the major rules of evidence is that you must have direct knowledge, through the senses, and we place a real premium on seeing and hearing, in order to testify as a non-expert. This is rule of evidence 602. Someone who has never been to Iraq has no 602 knowledge about what is going on there. I have no 602 knowledge regarding Iraq. If you go to Iraq and stay in the hotel and gather news by talking to people, but don't go riding around the city of Baghdad, or the country at large, you don't really have 602 knowledge either. Peters provides a major smackdown to the inside the green zone, lazy, agenda driven journalists and a lot of convincing 602 knowledge. Highlights follow:

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.

Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops.

I think this evidence would shock a lot of people firm in their belief that all is lost in Iraq and the Civil War we fear has already started. Then Mr. Peters delivers a most effective explanation regarding the source of our misinformation.

So why were we told that Iraq was irreversibly in the throes of civil war when it wasn't remotely true? I think the answers are straightforward. First, of course, some parties in the West are anxious to believe the worst about Iraq. They've staked their reputations on Iraq's failure.

But there's no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook - or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad - working for "prestigious" publications - aren't out on the city streets the way they pretend to be.

They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.

And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.

And some of them have agendas of their own.

A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news?

I doubt it.

If reporters really care, it's easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment - and other great military units - will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there's the danger of becoming infected with patriot- ism . . .)

I'm just afraid that some of our journalists don't want to know the truth anymore.

OUCH

From now on, if the reporter doesn't name the military outfit he's hitched a ride with to get to the place he or she is reporting about, he or she is going to have nearly to walk on water to get me to believe what's being reported. I'm requiring 602 knowledge from here on out.