In February 2006, I was detained by the U.S. Army and ejected from Iraq. My crime? Reporting on the weapons and tactics used to counter Improvised Explosive Devices, in apparent violation of the ground rules for embedded media. Unbeknownst to me—and to my on-the-record source, apparently—the military considers details about radio jammers (designed to block the signals that detonate IEDs) secret. They could have saved us all a lot of grief by telling me that in advance, but that kind of thoroughness, I soon learned, is too much to expect. I figured my two-year-old military-reporting career was over.

As it turned out, the arrest didn’t end my war correspondence—just the U.S. part of it. Before and after the arrest, I’ve ridden to war or to peacekeeping with all kinds of armies—a sort of world military tour. One thing I’ve learned is that the way in which an army handles media says a lot about its values, its confidence in its mission, and—dare I say it?—its effectiveness in modern warfare, in which perceptions are critical. Here’s a sampling of what I learned:

U.S. Army
North-central Iraq:January and March 2005; February 2006

As the lead military service in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army handles a lot of press and that volume may help explain the service’s lapses. Since 2003, the Army has been playing catch-up to rapidly evolving media, alternately embracing and clamping down on bloggers, for instance, and constantly changing or reinterpreting the ground rules for embeds. One day, a certain tactic or technology is off-limits to reporters; the next, the Army is trumpeting the same weapons and practices as part of some PR strategy. (Shortly before my eviction, The San Diego Union-Tribune and other media conducted an on-the-record interview with a Marine general concerning the same...

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