This from a guy employed by a magazine that gave us Stephen Glass. I consider the New Republic to be the laughingstock of political rags.
>> I think if they are going over to get an idea of what war is really like then they should get in a Hummer and travel the roads with the troops.
The first American journalist killed in Iraq was Michael Kelly -- in a Hummer, traveling with the 3rd Infantry Division. Ironically, he was a former editor of the New Republic and still wrote in liberal media, though he had become one of the most thoughtful conservative voices in the country. Tony Snow on Fox mourned Kelly as "one of the handful of editorial geniuses in our generation," whose death was "an indescribable loss to the journalism profession." Indeed it was.