While trolling around the previously mentioned Iraq Now, I stumbled across the very entertaining and important Good Morning Mesopotamia!, a journalist's travelogue through the Iraqi wilderness (which, of course, includes Baghdad).

Even reading the very first one will show it's definitely not the kind of hard-hitting investigative reporting we've come to expect from Christiane Amanpour or Sam Donaldson's hair. However, I would argue it's every bit as important and certainly no less accurate a read on what is really happening over there.

Of no less interest is Mr. Galen's semi-professional assessment of why the press keeps screwing it up:

[Journalists getting posted in Iraq for long periods of time] is not the norm. More often, reporters - print and broadcast - cycle in and out sometimes for a few days or weeks; sometimes for a month.

It is axiomatic of the process that reporters (and people who write columns on the internet called "Mullings") have a tendency to parachute into a situation, talk to a few people (often other journalists) and then report what's really going on here.

We have discussed this before, but it bears repeating: If you read some report which says somewhere, "Observers here say …" you are reading the report of a journalist who was sitting at the bar talking to other journalists.

Recommended reading!