"Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees. This cable, marked "sensitive" and obtained by The Washington Post, outlines in spare prose the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government...read on"
KURTZ: John King, you're at home. You get a call from the White House about a secret presidential trip to Iraq and you can't tell anyone. Was that an awkward situation for you?
KING: It's a very awkward situation, Howie, and it's a very difficult situation and as an issue, the bureau chiefs need to work with it with the White House because it has happened once before…It is not the way it's supposed to work. The White House is supposed to call five bureau chiefs and say we have a secret trip to Baghdad and we need you to pick a pool correspondent. We need to work on this.
But the White House didn't do it that way. So I'm in the position of knowing we need to cover the president when he goes to Baghdad. So you raise objections to the White House and tell them this is not the way it's is supposed to work....
