John Burns does the New York Times proud

Not the usual fare for this site, certainly, but I believe very strongly in praising the media when they do something right. This is a worthwhile interview (full transcript here)between Hugh Hewitt and John Burns, the NY Times' Baghdad Bureau chief. He and reporter Dexter Filkins have been doing a good job over there, and he doesn't mind expressing a little admiration for the American military. (I think the problem with the New York Times is less with professionals like Burns and more with the brass on 43rd street. )

It was nice of him to do the Hewitt show, too. MSM figures who are invited to appear on any right-leaning talk show probably only accept with trepidation, wondering if they'll be ambushed. But this was civil and informative. And also alarming about the stakes of an abrupt American pullout:

...it seems to me very clear that if you withdrew, precipitously, American troops, that it would have a rapidly destabilizing effect, and that such counterbalance as there is to the rising tide of sectarian insurgent killing in Iraq would be removed, and the general expectation, I think, and I would imagine that this is understood, one would hope it would be quite widely, is that if American troops were withdrawn on an accelerated basis, there would likely be much greater mayhem than there already is.