Today's theme seems to be enterprising youngsters, except this one gets mostly criticism rather than praise. A Florida high school student who wants to be a journalist, Farris Hassan, decides to go to Iraq himself:

Using money his parents had given him at one point, he bought a $900 plane ticket and took off from school a week before Christmas vacation started, skipping classes and leaving the country on Dec. 11.

His goal: Baghdad. Those privy to his plans: two high school buddies.

The timeline of his adventure in Iraq is here.

He learned about "immersion journalism" and decided he wanted to experience it rather than just be a spectator. Contrast this young man with Newsweek's Joe Cochrane, a guy who gets paid to tell us about Iraq. From a July piece we ran:

Newsweek reporter Joe Cochrane admits his own ignorance about things happening in Iraq, then lectures us about ours:

Is it really that bad in Iraq? It’s hard to say because the international media cannot adequately cover the war and Iraq’s reconstruction because it’s simply too dangerous. I would love to write about new schools being built and local village leaders learning about democracy, but I can’t go out to see such things. Maybe that’s why American friends who’ve never even been to Iraq—or read a book about the country for that matter—tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say things are so bad.

Unfortunately though, the pioneering spirit in America is waning. Years ago, teenagers would lie about their age to get into the military during wartime. Today, a trip to Iraq by an ambitious young man is described thusly:

But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation...

It begins with a high school class on "immersion journalism" and one overly eager — or naively idealistic — student who's lucky to be alive after going way beyond what any teacher would ask...

And as soon as the lanky, 6-foot teenager opened his mouth — he speaks no Arabic — his true nationality would have betrayed him...

Hassan's dangerous adventure winds down with the 101st Airborne delivering the Fort Lauderdale teen to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad...

Traveling on his own in a land where insurgents and jihadists have kidnapped more than 400 foreigners, killing at least 39 of them, Hassan walked straight into a death zone...

"This place is incredibly dangerous to individual private American citizens, especially minors, and all of us, especially the military, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure this youth's safety, even if he doesn't acknowledge it or even understand it," a U.S. official who wasn't authorized to speak to the media said on condition of anonymity...

His plan was to take a taxi across the border and ultimately to Baghdad — an unconventional, expensive and utterly dangerous route...

He now understands how dangerous his trip was, that he was only a whisker away from death.

AP Writer Jason Straziuso says at one point that much of Hassan's story of his time in Iraq can't be corroborated, though evidently Straziuso is quite sure that Hassan was "a whisker away from death." Hassan wrote before his trip:

There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction. Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice's call for help. Unfortunately altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will.

No wonder AP is so horrified.

Update: Ace agrees. So does Michelle Malkin.