Petraeus Gave Student Summer VIP Tour of IraqBy Megan Greenwell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 3, 2007; Page C01
CAMP TAJI, Iraq -- The briefing was top secret, limited to a group of men with titles ranging from captain to four-star general -- plus one awed 19-year-old civilian.
At first, the teenager sat outside the briefing room with a handful of reporters. Then an aide to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, poked his head out of the door and said, "Wesley Morgan? General Petraeus wants you in here."
Morgan, a sophomore at Princeton, spent his summer vacation in Iraq on a personal invitation from Petraeus.
He met with the visiting then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, and had access to multiple classified briefings. He helped patrol streets in Baghdad. His identification card read "journalist," because he keeps a blog about his experiences, but he was treated more like one of the members of Congress or other VIPs who have passed through Iraq.
The trip was the chance of a lifetime for Morgan, an ROTC cadet who said he first became interested in military history and counterinsurgency at age 6. But Petraeus's invitation also highlights his desire to attract more people like Morgan to military service -- the guys with degrees from places like Princeton (where Petraeus himself earned a doctorate), the slightly nerdy ones who are as comfortable poring over treatises on counterinsurgency tactics as going out on patrol.
"He has studied Iraq deeply and is exceedingly well read," Petraeus said of his protege. "I love to see these types of people here."
more (emphasis added)
Why do I smell propaganda? Withdraw the troops! This is
Iraq.