Good for Spc. Wilson, but bad for the one who prompted him

LET’S START with this: Donald Rumsfeld needs to go. Give him a pat on the back for Afghanistan, maybe even another Medal of Freedom, since the president is feeling particularly generous with those these days. But he’s got to go.

I reached that conclusion along with the rest of our editorial board back in May, when we first called for his departure. That was, in particular, over Abu Ghraib. As we said then, our mission in Iraq is far too important to be threatened by a figure who seemed to embody for the world the disparity between American ideals and practices in the war on terror.

That was enough, but add any other reasons you like — his failure to recognize that Iraq wasn’t Afghanistan, that we would need enough troops to secure the country after toppling Saddam. And that they would need armor. Or take his attitude toward recent questions about that lack of armor. You’d think he was smart enough to know that the morale of the troops, and of the folks back home, is just as important as ammunition to success in Iraq.

Which brings me to my subject. As I said, the man’s got to go. But it’s not the business of newspaper reporters to push him out the door, especially not if they manipulate events to do it.

Specialist. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee National Guard performed a service to his comrades when he confronted the secretary of Defense with the fact that he and thousands of others were going into harm’s way in inadequately armed vehicles. The exchange made a huge splash, because it was seen as coming from an ordinary citizen-soldier speaking truth to power.

So good for him. But not so good for one Edward Lee Pitts, reporter with the Chattanooga Times Free Press, who apparently boasted in an e-mail of having prompted Spec. Wilson to ask the question. “I just had one of my best days as a journalist today,” Mr. Pitts has been quoted as writing. “I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along.... Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld.... I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone... and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.... I have been trying to get this story out for weeks.... But it felt good to hand it off to the national press.”

Mr. Pitts’ publisher later confirmed the role his reporter had played. The publisher added, “It was supposed to be in our story, how the question got asked, but it was not.”

I have no doubt Spec. Wilson asked a question close to his and his buddies’ hearts, and I’m glad that it may lead to real action to address the problem. But the reporter’s role as stage manager in this gives me the creeps.

I hadn’t focused on this until a colleague from another state sent an e-mail to a bunch of us editors raising the issue. He was disturbed that other journalists he had talked with thought there was little to nothing wrong with what the reporter had done. “I’m not sure why this incident bothers me so much,” he wrote.

I couldn’t help responding:

“I know why it bothers me. My problem is that since it happened, it’s taken on a life of its own as emblematic of what’s happening in Iraq. Not that the issue of our vehicles not being properly armored isn’t a real problem. It is, and it should be addressed — and yes, maybe reporters should have been asking about it all along. But this one guy (who was egged on by a reporter, even though he didn’t have to ask the question if he didn’t want to) is being held out as representing the attitude of our troops in-theater — they feel betrayed by the administration, and they’re ticked off and not gonna take it any more. In just a few days, he’s practically become this war’s GI Joe or Willy.

“Over the weekend, an AP analysis by Tom Raum spun this incident, the lawsuit over extended tours of duty and the recent refusal by an SC Guard unit to go on a mission into ‘a lessening of faith in the Iraq mission’ and a ‘growing restiveness of U.S. troops’ that ‘echoes a drop in optimism at home that a stable, democratic government can be established in Iraq.’ The ‘town hall’ confrontation seems to have been the straw that caused this piece to be written, as it dominates the text.

“Maybe such ominous conclusions are warranted. Or maybe not. A piece in the NYT’s Week in Review made much of a group of Marines going out on a risky raid with unarmored vehicles (they came back safely, at least from this one), and of course cited the Rumsfeld Q and A confrontation up high and prominently. (‘Though they had no inkling of it, the vulnerability with which they were setting out would soon become the focus of a new dispute over the war.’)

“But then, you get to the jump — to the very end of the piece, really — and find that morale in the unit in question is just fine. (‘But one striking thing about life with the 2/24, as with other units struggling with inadequate equipment, was the absence of grinding complaint. These marines have bolted the hardships of their deployment onto the corps ethos of unremitting toughness, to the point that deprivation is less complained about than celebrated, as proof that the marines can overcome.’) But then, maybe it’s just that this is the Marine Corps, and they’ve been making do with inadequate, hand-me-down equipment at least since World War II.

“So which snapshot provides the accurate picture of morale among most of our troops over there? I have no idea, and that’s frustrating, because the answer to that question is critical to whether we succeed in Iraq. Tom Friedman recently wrote that he will cling to hope about our mission there as long as the troops do. So will I. So will the majority of Americans.

“But how are we supposed to know WHAT the situation is if a reporter manipulates the popular perception of our troops’ morale in the field, and does so with such spectacular success as this one did?

“THAT’s what bothers me about it.”

Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.