In the wake of Newsweek’s retraction of its Quran desecration story, some conservative media know exactly why this error occurred.

“The press corps suffers from its own Vietnam syndrome,” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. “This is part of a basic media mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam and has shown itself with a vengeance during the Iraq conflict and the war on terror.”

The press corps, claims the editorial, is “always assuming the worst about the military and government motives.” Otherwise, why would Newsweek print this story? Conservative columnists and talk shows accuse the media of undermining the troops.

This is utter nonsense. It bespeaks the kind of defeatist mentality conservatives try to blame on their favorite bogeyman, the dratted “liberals.” Those who decry a press corps infected with “Vietnam syndrome” appear to be gearing up for a blame game over “who lost Iraq?”

Well, Iraq isn’t lost yet. Nor do any of the brave American reporters I’ve met who risk their lives to cover that story remotely wish for such an outcome. Setting the media up as future fall guy won’t make the current bad news improve.

Had the Bush administration paid more attention to early reporting from Iraq, the situation there might be less violent now. The media correctly described the mounting dangers of looting, insurgents and sectarian strife long before such realities were admitted by the White House. Even if every U.S. correspondent adopted the gung-ho, go-White-House approach of, say, Fox News channel, that wouldn’t make the insurgency go away.

Which brings me to the main point. Far from “a basic media mistrust of the military,” the press corps has better relations with the military than I can recall in 30 years of reporting. Many reporters have been embedded in military units over the last two years. As former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke recently told the Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz, “If anything, there is a greater appreciation and respect for what the military does than 10 or 15 years ago.”

The U.S. missteps that helped fuel the current violence in Iraq can’t be dumped on the military’s shoulders. Ours is a country where the brass are subordinate to civilian leaders. The military has often been ahead of those leaders in grasping the realities of Iraq.

Remember Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who famously tried to warn Donald Rumsfeld that more U.S. soldiers would be needed to secure Iraq after Saddam fell? Commanders such as Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the 101st Airborne, understood what kind of strategic planning was necessary for the postwar, even if Pentagon civilians didn’t. Gen. John Abizaid, the savvy head of U.S. Central Command, spoke frankly of the emergence of a guerrilla war in Iraq before Rumsfeld would admit it existed.

All of the above got plenty of ink.

The mainstream media have written endless articles about brave fighting units and civil affairs specialists. It was the media that revealed, with little thanks from the Pentagon, that reservists were dying in Iraq because they lacked body armor and armored humvees.

In other words, there is no “basic media mistrust of the military.” That doesn’t mean, of course, that there are never articles that critique the military on a specific subject as part of normal journalistic work.

But media mistrust regarding Iraq has rightly focused on civilian administration officials. The reason has nothing to do with Vietnam syndrome, but everything to do with watching Pentagon civilians make repeated mistakes that undercut the Iraq effort.

Unlike Newsweek, those officials rarely admit their mistakes.

Which brings us back to the subject of Newsweek and Abu Ghraib. The newsweekly was dead wrong to run such a controversial item based on one unnamed source who later changed his story. But many who excoriate Newsweek seem to believe any writing about mistreatment of prisoners is the work of traitors. You should see some of the vicious e-mail I get.

To those e-mailers I say: In a world where everyone has Internet access, you can’t keep prisoner problems a secret. Long before the Newsweek debacle, stories were circulating in the Arabic media about the U.S. use of tactics toward Muslim prisoners that violated religious taboos. These stories come from former prisoners, Pentagon officials and the International Red Cross. Such stories provide fodder for Muslim extremists, irrespective of Newsweek.

Ignoring such stories won’t make them vanish. The prisoner issue must be addressed in a better way than the Pentagon has done until now. Those who decry journalists who raise it are suffering from Iraq Syndrome: a misplaced belief that by hiding facts, you are helping your country.

Journalists who’ve covered Iraq know this is an illusion. For Iraq to get better, reality must be faced.