"The first thing they would say," said Garrett, "is 'How come all the good stuff we're doing is not being broadcast back at home?'"

"And they were just angry about it," he added.

Garrett, who spent a week in Iraq last month, said that despite the violence of recent weeks, "when you talk to the troops, when you see what's really happening on the ground over there, you realize that we are moving ahead, that we are making progress."

He noted, for instance, that the Abu Ghraib prison - which for the American press has become symbolic of a mission gone off the tracks - now houses a hospital as well as detention cells.

"In that hospital, they not only treat American soldiers," said Garrett, "but Iraqi children who have been wounded in all these terrorist attacks."

Editor's note: