Wesley Morgan, 19, a sophomore at Princeton, spent his summer vacation in Iraq on a personal invitation from David Petraeus.
His identification card read "journalist," because he keeps a blog about his experiences, but he was treated more like one of the members of Congress or other VIPs who have passed through Iraq.
Petraeus's invitation highlights his desire to attract more people like Morgan to military service -- the guys with degrees from places like Princeton (where Petraeus himself earned a doctorate), the slightly nerdy ones who are as comfortable poring over treatises on counterinsurgency tactics as going out on patrol.
Says his almost step-mother: "I was hoping this day would come when he wasn't sitting alone in his room drawing maps of Iraq and reading."