WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- To paraphrase Winston Churchill on the Battle of Britain: Never in the field of Middle Eastern reporting was so much owed by so many to so few. In fact, to one man.

Martin Sieff's "Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East" is a superb compendium that should be required reading for anyone reporting on what diplomats prefer to call the Near East. Whether Middle or Near, it's where political correctness can kill. And no one knows this better than Sieff, a brilliant journalist with an encyclopedic knowledge and understanding of world history. Puncturing myths is one of his strong suits.

Truth in advertising compels me to say I hired "Marty" when I was the editor of the Washington Times in the 1980s and then again when I was the chief executive officer of United Press International in the late 1990s. He is a nonpareil among the best and brightest I have known in six decades of journalism.

Among the gems in Sieff's "Politically Incorrect Guide":

-- The intelligence agencies of the U.S. government and the State and Energy departments correctly predicted the problems the United States would face in Iraq after conquering it, but the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith team wouldn't listen to any of them.