Gates of Vienna: What a Day in the ’Hood

The title of this post is one commenter’s summation of Michael Yon’s latest news from Iraq.

It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from him and in passing, Yon explains why.

There is, as usual, lots of meat in this latest epistle of his, entitled “Meanwhile”…

One subject he covers is his relations with the military as an embed journalist:

With the odometer running over many embeds, Mellinger [that’s Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger, the real deal in Iraq — D] has taken me about 4,000 miles (total) up and down Iraqi roads, visiting units from north to south, east to west, showing that the military truly opens their doors to writers who will stick it out. They don’t even have to like you: my fights with the Army are well-known, yet they continue to open their doors. There’s a lesson in there. I wrote that Iraq was in a civil war shortly after covering the first elections. I wrote about commanders who did poorly, and ISF units that couldn’t shoot straight, and I wrote about the veneer of victory in Afghanistan cracking under the weight of a poppy-fueled Taliban resurgence. Yet they still let me in.

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