Smith has a bit of a different take on the coverage of the war, saying that “I think the media does not intentionally lie or misreport the news. I think they are ignorant of how insurgent warfare is waged, and they play right into the hands of the forces we are fighting.” As an example, he cites was a story that ran last summer about a controversial Department of Defense program about which he had personal knowledge (and one which he will not name specifically), that created a stir in the American media. Smith thought that the DoD program “was a great idea and a needed solution to help us wage the war here.” He also thought that the media got the story wrong. “What they were reporting was not, in fact, the real story. I think we need embeds here in Iraq, and I think news organizations should provide insurgent/unconventional warfare training for those who wish to cover the fighting. Not doing so is akin to having a football fan report on neurosurgery.”

This, of course, might be easier said than done. While it would be great if embedded reporters came to the task armed with an intimate knowledge of the military and how it operates, in reality, this probably just isn’t possible.

But, given the length of the war in Iraq, and the number of reporters who have embedded, it would be safe to assume that the American media is churning out an entire generation of young reporters who have had their “boots on the ground” in combat, so that the general intimacy the media has with the military is probably greater now than it ever has been.

Still, with Frontlines, readers of a newspaper Web site have the opportunity to get the story directly from the source: The men and women doing the fighting. And the Times deserves credit for trying to plug a hole in its own reporting by adding active-duty military bloggers to its roster.

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