Michael Yon

Michael Yon is an American writer and photographer who has been embedded with a number of different coalition units in Iraq over the last few years. His accounts are engaging and enlightening – and the comments can make equally interesting reads, especially as recently he has been with our boys (and girl) from the Queen’s Royal Lancers. He brings the angle of being able to compare our forces with his own country’s and ours haven’t proved wanting.

His dispatch is in four parts: I II III IV

He is currently back with US forces in Operation Arrowhead Ripper – giving far more informative coverage than the publicly-funded BBC back in Baghdad seem to manage.

One wonders why our own BBC cannot give such a good inside account of our troops’ work, especially when they seem so ready to do similar (and more) for our enemies.

Regardless of your views of the Iraqi and Afghan situations, and granting that every organisation will have the few bad apples, our service personnel nevertheless deserve nothing but respect and whatever moral and other support we can give them.

UPDATE

By coincidence, James Cleverly has picked up on some excellent recent coverage of the Afghan campaign in the Telegraph. Go read, and take in the comments too.