I read with great interest all letters and messages that readers send to the editors and to me -- especially those that question or criticize Stars and Stripes' policies or coverage. These last cause the paper to reconsider what it does and can lead to changes that benefit readers.

Very occasionally, a communication will rile me. One such was a letter to the editor published in editions of July 19, entitled "A challenge to Stripes' staff," from Maj. Erik C. Rivers in Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq. The letter started off by criticizing Stripes for printing syndicated articles from "The Associated Press, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc. that offer political grandstanding rather than objective news...."

Fair enough. In my columns and to the staff I have counseled against using articles from outside sources that are opinion pieces masquerading as news or unbiased analyses. I believe the editors are conscientious in trying to weed out that kind of coverage, but some of it gets through.

The writer also berates Stripes for running an article and photograph about Wiccans this month, and for "your steady pablum on being 'gay in the military.'" These criticisms didn't make my blood pressure rise. They are fair comment. Sometimes, without realizing it, a publication will devote a disproportionate amount of space to subjects of interest to a small minority of readers. (Although, truth to tell, religion has been a hot topic on the Stripes letters page; eight letters having dealt with it so far this month. The "don't ask, don't tell" policy also has drawn strong comment on the letters page in the past.)

No, what set me fuming was this passage: "The Stars and Stripes reporters would better serve us by interviewing us daily as we come inside the wire at our combat outposts and camps. The paper would then get factual, real-time reportage and analysis from those who are actually out there patrolling, making contact and defeating the enemy." And then: "I challenge Stripes to live up to Pulitzer Prize-winning Ernie Pyle's standard, who informed and inspired the servicemembers who fought in the war zone as he did the civilians back home."

For the record, Stars and Stripes reporters have been covering the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq since the start of hostilities downrange in 2001. For several years that coverage has been exclusively from embeds with the troops. At any given time there are up to five Stripes reporters in the war zone. Their job is not to sit in a hotel or the Green Zone and send Iraqi reporters to find out what is happening on the streets. Nor is it to write analyses from the safety of a guarded compound. Their instructions are to stay with the soldiers and Marines and share their tribulations, report how they live and what they are saying and feeling.

And they do not do that from "inside the wire" but by going out on patrols with the fighters, sharing all the risks. As to emulating Ernie Pyle, the legendary World War II correspondent, I believe a good number of articles produced by this paper's reporters live up to the standard set by that talented writer. Here are a couple in support of that theory: "A long day on patrol in Mahmudiyah" by Drew Brown, and "Anti-tank mines force GIs to go off-roading," by Monte Morin.

They are just two of the nearly three dozen bylined stories by embedded Stripes reporters in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past month. The reporters can't be everywhere at once, and neither can the newspaper itself, thus I am not really angry with the major from Al Taqaddum. But where the reporters are able to go, and the paper is able to carry their words, light is shed on the day-to-day experiences of the warfighters. This is not only for the benefit of fellow servicemembers but for "the civilians back home," who were of concern to the letter writer.

Witness this e-mail sent this month to one of our editors from an acquaintance:

"My youngest son is now serving in Afghanistan and I can't tell you how great it is to get the true scoop from your paper. I'm the kind of Mom who just wants to know the facts.

"...If you would, tell your colleagues how much it means to mothers like me, not to hear her son discussed as simply a troop. To have names and apt descriptions of the human beings that are willing to serve their country with tremendous personal sacrifice and hardship humanizes it all for us and allows us to feel some dignity when the rest of the world seems to be absent of it."

There, now I'll hold my peace.