Word: iraq
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...begin with, there's security. Since the first priority of McCain and Obama's hosts would be to ensure that the candidates leave Iraq alive, they would by necessity take them to places the U.S. and Iraq have made safe and avoid places they have not. General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are unlikely to introduce Obama and McCain to Iraqis who want to kill them, and thus their meetings would tilt heavily toward those Iraqis who want the U.S. to stay and away from those who are trying to force America to leave. As the New York Times...
Also, Petraeus and Crocker report to the President, a guy with strong feelings about Iraq. They and their staffs don't want to sound like partisan flacks, but it's far easier for them to reinforce the Administration's view than to contradict it, especially when the cameras roll. By making them the spokesmen for its Iraq policy, the Bush Administration has encouraged Americans to believe Petraeus and Crocker are independent analysts who just happen to agree with their Commander in Chief. But Petraeus and Crocker would never purposely craft an itinerary that might cast doubt on the Administration...
...exactly these reasons that some of the members of Congress who know the military best have been most wary of visiting Iraq. When Patrick Murphy, who served with the 82nd Airborne in Baghdad, returned to the country as a Congressman in 2007, he said he found the trip "somewhat scripted" and insisted on breaking off and seeing his former comrades so they "would give the straight story." Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine and Secretary of the Navy, called congressional Iraq visits a "dog and pony" show...
This is not to say the security improvements in Iraq are illusory. It's just that the war's realities are too elusive to grasp on a brief trip led by people with a vested interest in what you see. In Vietnam, the wisest U.S. officials sought out journalists like David Halberstam and Bernard Fall who had spent years traveling the country, and former diplomats and military officers who had the freedom to say what they really believed. And even that kind of granular, uninhibited knowledge isn't much help without a larger view of the world. McCain thinks winning...
Even in the midst of a historic Democratic-primary race, there are some stories that cannot wait. I'm talking about Mark Thompson's groundbreaking investigative piece on the military's use of antidepressants for soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story details what is really happening to the men and women waging war in our name. Antidepressants help many thousands of people, but is it acceptable that such drugs have become in many ways another tool of war, along with M-16s and body armor? The piece also touches on a larger policy issue: "If these wars...