Hey every­body! I’m back after a long hia­tus, hon­ey­moon and oodles of time with the in-laws. But I’m back in Beirut now and ready for action.
And what a day to come back to work. In a very dis­turb­ing devel­op­ment, [five Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard boats harassed three big U.S. naval ves­sels in the Ara­bian Gulf](http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/07/america/US-Navy-Iran.php), nearly spark­ing a sea bat­tle, accord­ing to the Pen­ta­gon. Over the week­end, the five smaller ves­sels threat­ened an Amer­i­can frigate, destroyer and cruiser in the Strait of Hor­muz.
“Five small boats were act­ing in a very aggres­sive way, charg­ing the ships, drop­ping boxes in the water in front of the ships and caus­ing our ships to take eva­sive maneu­vers,” a Pen­ta­gon offi­cial said. There was also com­mu­ni­ca­tions between the Amer­i­cans and the Ira­ni­ans, which the Pen­ta­gon described to the effect of, “we’re com­ing at you and you’ll explode in a cou­ple min­utes.“
The story doesn’t describe them beyond “small boats,” so they could be patrol boats or the Iran­ian equiv­a­lent of the Amer­i­can RHIBs (Rigid Hull Inflat­able Boats), but even so, they could do some real dam­age. The [U.S.S. Cole](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing) and the [UK 15](http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0„-6796836,00.html) are high on everyone’s mind in the Gulf, as is the attack on the [U.S.S. Firebolt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Firebolt_(PC-10)).
And from my time with the Amer­i­can, British and Aus­tralian forces in the Gulf, I can tell you the Ira­ni­ans are con­sid­ered the fore­most threat. [As I wrote back in July last year](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/07/water_and_oil_mix_in_the_gulf_1.html):

The Ira­ni­ans are a con­stant pres­ence in the Gulf, which is nat­ural con­sid­er­ing its long coast­line on the Gulf. And not far from KAAOT, they’ve made a naval base on a crane that sunk dur­ing the 1980 – 88 Iran-Iraq War. (Part of it still sticks up out of the water.) You can see it with the naked eye and Amer­i­can com­man­ders say the Ira­ni­ans are con­duct­ing recon ops on the Coali­tion forces.
The Iran­ian Navy gets some respect from [Cmdr. Jim Aiken, 40, who cap­tains the Amer­i­can guided mis­sile destroyer Chung-Hoon] and other com­man­ders, who told me that when pass­ing through the bot­tle­neck to the Gulf called the [Strait of Hormuz](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/hormuz.gif&imgrefurl=http://worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/printpage/hormuz.htm&h=426&w=427&sz=25&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=WdgznmPezyzFtM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=126&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstrait%2Bof%2Bhormuz%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3D6j8%26sa%3DX), a pass­ing Iran­ian Navy ship pre­sented col­ors and her sailors saluted, hold­ing fast to naval tra­di­tions the world over. But the IRGC Navy is a dif­fer­ent story. The Coali­tion sailors I spoke with called them thugs and accused them of basi­cally run­ning a pro­tec­tion racket on dhows that ven­ture into their part of the Gulf.

At the time, I asked Aiken what would hap­pen if the Ira­ni­ans tried to grab some U.S. sailors like they to the 15 British com­man­dos back in March 2007. He mum­bled some stuff before finally say­ing the U.S. would shoot back. And that’s almost what hap­pened in this inci­dent. The Pen­ta­gon offi­cial said the Ira­ni­ans turned back “lit­er­ally at the very moment that U.S. forced were prepar­ing to open fire.“
What does this mean? I’m not sure yet; it could be just one of those things but it’s inter­est­ing that the IRGC took over Iran’s naval com­mand in the Gulf back in Novem­ber, accord­ing to the U.S. Navy. It could be a probe, a provo­ca­tion or some yahoos out of con­trol. The IRGC isn’t the most uni­fied or dis­ci­plined of armed forces. But no mat­ter what, the Ira­ni­ans have given Pres­i­dent Bush some fresh PR to use against them [when he comes call­ing on the region this week](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/06/AR2008010601574.html?hpid=moreheadlines) to shore up an anti-Iran coali­tion among Arab states.
**UPDATE 1÷8÷08 10:36:24 AM:** Folks more knowl­edge­able than me are chew­ing this over, and they’re smelling a rat. It *is* awfully con­ve­nient that an inci­dent hap­pens on the even of Bush’s visit to the region where con­tain­ing Iran­ian aggres­sion is high on the president’s agenda. And the Navy claims the IRGC-N is run­ning pro­tec­tion rack­ets and smug­gling. Could the dumped white boxes have been Iran­ian attempts to dump con­tra­band? On the other hand, the U.S.S. Cole inci­dent has made the Navy under­stand­ably twitchy. Those guys out there are *switched on*, big time. And Iran­ian expla­na­tion that they didn’t rec­og­nize the ships is implau­si­ble at best. A cruiser, destroyer and frigate aren’t small ships, and the only naval power of force in the Gulf’s inter­na­tional waters are going to be either Amer­i­can, British or Aus­tralian. The Ira­ni­ans knew with whom they were play­ing chicken. Per­haps this was an indi­ca­tion from Iran that it can cause trou­ble on mul­ti­ple fronts for the U.S. and its allies?
There’s also a his­tory of Iran­ian aggres­sion in the Gulf dur­ing the 1980 – 88 Iran-Iraq war and the war of the tankers. The Ira­ni­ans laid mines in inter­na­tional waters that led to the [U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Samuel_B._Roberts_%28FFG-58%29#1988_deployment_and_mine_strike).
So, in short, there are good rea­sons for both sides to pro­voke the other, and it remains to be seen what — if any­thing — will come of this. In all hon­esty, prob­a­bly noth­ing, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Posted with­out com­ment:
[From W. Thomas Smith Jr.](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWZmZGM5NWVhNzFhNTQ1ZjhlM2VkNzBmYWFmNTM0MmQ=): “After much reflec­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion, I am with­draw­ing from my pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship as a reg­u­lar free­lancer with *National Review Online*.“
[Kathryn Jean Lopez weighs in](http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmU4ZjkxNGVkMWZlMGIzZWZkYTM2NDZkYmM5NDQxY2I=):

I apol­o­gize to all of our read­ers. We should have required Smith to clearly source all of his orig­i­nal report­ing from Lebanon. Smith let him­self become sus­cep­ti­ble to spin by those tak­ing him around Lebanon, so his report­ing from there should be read with that knowl­edge. (We are attach­ing this note to all his Lebanon report­ing.) This was an edit­ing fail­ure as much as it was a report­ing fail­ure. We let him down, and we let you down, and we’re tak­ing steps to make sure it doesn’t hap­pen again.
Smith has, on his own, decided that he will no longer write for NRO. We respect his decision.

SINGAPORE — I know, I know… I said I was tak­ing a break while I get mar­ried, and all, but I’m in Sin­ga­pore wait­ing for a refuel, and I saw that Huff­Post has [finally taken down that clown of a jour­nal­ist, W. Thomas Smith Jr](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/01/in-the-tank-did-national_n_74954.html). Smith alighted in Lebanon back in Sep­tem­ber for a few weeks and [his accounts](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGRkZDFmMGFiODFjZTI0ODQzNTg4NjVkMjUyOTZhNDM=) of my adopted home [are risible](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzUzMDFmZmU5ZGZhNDZhMzIwNmY3OWU2NTMyM2IwNTc=).

I was a source for this story — I called him a “fabulist” — because I always intended to blog on Smith, tear­ing down his crap, but to be hon­est, I was going through a rough blog patch and couldn’t seem to work up the proper dudgeon.

Still, in one of his more fan­tas­tic posts, not men­tioned in the Huff­Post arti­cle, he claimed the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps [tried to assas­si­nate an anti-Hezbollah Shi’ite politi­cian with an “acid-weapon.”](http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTE1NjEwMmQ2MDY0NTkzNzhlNGM3MzFkZDMyZDVlZjA=)

I inter­viewed Sayed once. Had cof­fee and sweets with him in his office. Con­ducted a recon­nais­sance mis­sion with one of his armed men and two of mine in one of Sayed’s cars. I rode with him dur­ing a sec­ond recon in another of his cars. And yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (here in Lebanon) attempted to kill Sayed and his fam­ily by sab­o­tag­ing his vehi­cle (the first one I rode in). They planted a delayed acid-weapon on his car’s under­car­riage, which ate through the chas­sis and caused the vehi­cle to basi­cally break in half while he was driving.

As a buddy of mine remarked after that one, “I wanna cover this guy’s Lebanon. It sounds so much more inter­est­ing.“
Indeed. Too bad his sto­ries are ridicu­lous falsehoods.

**UPDATE:** So, [some are reporting](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/they-knew-his-w.html) that I noti­fied Kathryn-Jean Lopez of Smith’s sto­ries six weeks ago. This is true, how­ever, I sent the email to tank@​nationalreview.​com. Did she get it? Did any­one? Hell if I know since I never received a response. Here’s the text of the email I sent on Oct. 6:

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3)

Message-Id: <6​9​9​4​FFC1​-​C8​8​D-​4​EDB-​9​C9​6​-​4​7​6​3​0​C6​C3​C3​1​@​mac.​com>

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

boundary=Apple-Mail-2 – 701486348

To: tank@​nationalreview.​com

Sub­ject: Accu­racy alert

From: Christo­pher Allbritton

Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:39:27 +0300

–Apple-Mail-2 – 701486348

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

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Sirs—
Your posts by W. Thomas Smith Jr. are hilar­i­ous! Great fic­tion reading.

Such as this one:

“The gen­eral briefed me regard­ing the bat­tle­field at Nahr al-Bared, near his camp, and what I would see today *as the first Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist to visit the site of Lebanon’s defeat of Al Qaeda-affiliate Fatah al Islam.*”

Ah, no.

You do know that almost every Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist liv­ing in Beirut has been up to Nahr el-Bared sev­eral times dur­ing and after the fight­ing? I myself filed sto­ries for the [*Wash­ing­ton Times*](http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070904/FOREIGN/109040025/1003) and the [*Newark Star-Ledger*](http://www.long-war.com/Allbrittons_Clips/Clips/Entries/2007/9/3_As_Lebanon_war_re-ignites%252C_a_risky_lie_protects_a_friend.html), the day after the fight­ing stopped — and I was in a hell of a lot more dan­ger than your man is in today. (*Star-Ledger* seems to have archived the story, so that link goes to my per­sonal site, but that’s the story that ran there. *WaTimes* is still available.)

You know, for a pub­li­ca­tion that went after the *New Repub­lic* so hard for its soldier-in-Iraq stuff, your guy here is hor­ri­bly, hor­ri­bly inac­cu­rate and sen­sa­tion­al­ist. I’m an Amer­i­can and I never have body­guards and never needed one. He is mak­ing Beirut seem much more dan­ger­ous than it is. He also is — as are you, since I assume he’s expens­ing it —  get­ting fleeced by some Lebanese con artists. He doesn’t need weapons and he’s mak­ing a big prob­lem by car­ry­ing them and pub­licly writ­ing about his “recon mis­sions” in the Dahiyah. That’s not what jour­nal­ists do; it’s what spies do, and by his actions, he’s mak­ing every­one sus­pi­cious of west­ern jour­nal­ists. That is the height of irresponsibility.

Sec­ondly, he’s a liar. Hezbol­lah never invaded east Beirut on the 29^th. And they don’t have 200 “heav­ily armed” mili­ti­a­men down­town. I passed by today. There are about 40 guys down there with no weapons at all. They sit around, smok­ing shisha in jeans and t-shirts.

Per­haps your man in Beirut should not rely solely on March 14 guys and get a wider per­spec­tive. And stop lying and mak­ing care­less errors. It’s your cred­i­bil­ity on the line, after all.

Sin­cerely,
Christo­pher Allbritton

So, that’s out there now for the record.

BEIRUT — This will likely be the last post of the year on B2I, as in two days I leave for Aus­tralia to get mar­ried. There’s also the lit­tle mat­ter of hol­i­days and declin­ing inter­est on the part of the major papers in Iraq. I fig­ure it will pick back up next year once the cam­paign gets into full swing and Iraq is a major issue again. I hope so anyway.

Lebanon is a mess, but it looks like things are mov­ing again. I sus­pect it will be sorted out in a week or so. Don’t look for a pres­i­den­tial vote tomor­row, though. The Lebanese have to amend the con­sti­tu­tion first, and there could be some legal wran­gling. At the very least, there’s some paper­work of some kind and that won’t be done by tomorrow.

Iraq is improv­ing, for sure, on the secu­rity front and the Bush for­eign pol­icy team isn’t as abjectly hor­ri­ble as it has been in the past. But the real ques­tion, still, is whether the secu­rity gains mat­ter. Are we look­ing at another exam­ple of [Col. Tu’s com­ment to Army Col. Harry Summers](http://www.slate.com/id/2171510)? There’s some evi­dence the var­i­ous fac­tions are merely tak­ing a breather. I hope it is a last­ing decrease in vio­lence lead­ing to actual peace, but I wonder. …

Any­way, like I said, this is prob­a­bly it for 2007. It’s been a rough year in some ways, but a blessed one in oth­ers. Wish us all luck over here in this part of the world.

The Project for Excel­lence in Jour­nal­ism has [released the results of its sur­vey of West­ern reporters work­ing in Iraq](http://www.journalism.org/files/PEJ%20FINAL%20Survey%20of%20Journalists%20in%20IraqWITH%20SURVEY.pdf), and — for those of us who have been there — its results are unsur­pris­ing. (Link con­tains PDF file.)
From a sur­vey of 111 West­ern jour­nal­ists who worked or are work­ing in Iraq, almost two-thirds of the reporters said most or all of their street report­ing was done by local cit­i­zens. Yet, 87 per­cent said it wasn’t safe for their local staffers to carry note­books, cam­eras, IDs or any­thing else that iden­ti­fied them as jour­nal­ists. And two-thirds said they wor­ried that their reliance on local stringers would pro­duce inac­cu­rate reports. (The right-wing blog­gers are going to have a field day with this one. Charges of hotel jour­nal­ism will ring out again and accu­sa­tions of work­ing with al Qaeda will soon be heard.)
Some excepts from the exec­u­tive sum­mary:

Above all, the jour­nal­ists — most of them vet­eran war cor­re­spon­dents — describe con­di­tions in Iraq as the most per­ilous they have ever encoun­tered, and this above every­thing else is influ­enc­ing the report­ing. A major­ity of jour­nal­ists sur­veyed (57%) report that at least one of their Iraqi staff had been killed or kid­napped in the last year alone — and many more are con­tin­u­ally threat­ened. “Seven staffers killed since 2003, includ­ing three last July,” one bureau chief wrote with chill­ing brevity. “At least three have been kid­napped. All were freed.” …
“The dan­gers can’t be over­stated,” one print jour­nal­ist wrote. “It’s been an ambush — two staff killed, one wounded — var­i­ous fire­fights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by acci­dent, I’m pretty sure). It’s not fun; it’s not safe, but I go back because it needs to be told.“
What­ever the prob­lems, a mag­a­zine reporter offered, “The press….have car­ried out the clas­sic jour­nal­is­tic mis­sion of bear­ing wit­ness.“
“Wel­come to the new world of jour­nal­ism, boys and girls. This is where we lost our inno­cence. Secu­rity teams, body armor and armored cars will for­ever now be pushed in between jour­nal­ism and sto­ries,” one bureau chief declared.

I can attest to all these dan­gers. It was hell when I was there and the inabil­ity to tell the sto­ries of Iraqis was one of the rea­sons I moved to Lebanon. ([There’s less inter­est from edi­tors back home in those sto­ries anyway](http://www.journalism.org/node/8644); 41 per­cent of respon­dents say edi­tors have down­played these kinds of sto­ries.)
What’s going to drive some war oppo­nents into rage, how­ever, is the gen­er­ally pos­i­tive views of embed­ding the respon­dents hold.

More than eight-in ten jour­nal­ists (85%) sur­veyed have embed­ded with U.S. troops. And most of them see the pro­gram as the best avail­able way to report on the actions, both large and small, of U.S. troops. It also is often the only safe way to gain access to Iraqi civil­ians in cities and towns beyond Bagh­dad.
A major­ity of those sur­veyed (60%) tend to think embed­ding gives them access to places and peo­ple they could not oth­er­wise reach. Only 5% say they see embed­ding as mostly help­ing the Pen­ta­gon con­trol what is being reported. …
“There is no prob­lem with embed­ded report­ing, unless it is relied on as the pri­mary source of info on Iraq,” wrote one bureau chief. “If used as it should be — to pro­vide another layer of under­stand­ing of what’s going on there — it is a very use­ful tool. And we have to remem­ber that not every embed will pro­duce strong stories.”

Again, that was my expe­ri­ence with embed­ding. I found it use­ful but I had to bear in mind it wasn’t the whole story. It was the story of the U.S. mil­i­tary doing what­ever it was they were doing at that time. Some­times it was use­ful, other times it sucked. Such is war.
*(Full dis­clo­sure: I par­tic­i­pated in this sur­vey, but none of the quotes are I’ve seen in the sur­vey are based on my responses. Nor do I know who the other peo­ple are, but I can guess.)*