The United States military is drawing down its forces in Iraq and is still eager to engage with the press to show that President Obama’s promise to reach 50,000 troops by the end of August will be met. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, held a briefing with reporters this week. The military opened a prison transfer ceremony to reporters on Thursday. And embeds with units are still available.
But there appears to be a clamping-down on spontaneous interactions between soldiers and the news media.
Recently my colleague Steven Lee Myers visited Forward Operating Base Mahmudiya, which the Americans transferred to Iraqi control on Thursday, and was told he could not interview soldiers during his visit because the chain of command had not authorized “formal interviews” with the soldiers there, part of the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division.
The company commander at the base explained that his superiors wanted the focus of the visit to be on the process of the transfer — principally with only photographs and video — and not on the soldiers. (An Iraqi lieutenant colonel who showed up with trucks to haul away the detritus of KBR’s operations there also declined to be interviewed or to allow photographs.)
A civilian spokesman for the brigade, Tom Conning, later apologized, saying that the visit to the troops at Mahmudiya had not been properly organized.
In June I was embedded with a unit in northern Iraq when the McChrystal news broke. The soldiers who I was encamped with in the desert, on a mission to search for insurgents, were eager to talk about most anything: the war, the vicious fighting in prior tours, buddies killed, women back home.
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