Obama’s highly anticipated overseas tour, which includes visits to countries throughout the Middle East and Europe, has generated a flurry of news coverage in the U.S. and around the world. One sign of the attention being paid to Obama’s trip: All three major U.S. news network anchors are accompanying the presumptive Democratic nominee on his travels. (Although Ryan Lizza, the writer for the New Yorker, was reportedly banned from the Obama plane in what the Huffington Post is calling “retribution” for the New Yorker’s recent ill-conceived cover art and/or Lizza’s critical story about Obama.)

However, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Andrea Mitchell recently complained on MSNBC’s “Hardball” about the lack of access the Obama campaign has given reporters on the trip, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq:

“You’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military and what some would call fake interviews because they’re not interviews from a journalist,” she said. “Politically, it’s smart as can be, but we have not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.”

Here’s a roundup of Obama’s trip thus far:

- Afghanistan: Obama met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and called for an increase in the number of U.S. troops there, calling the situation in Afghanistan “precarious and urgent.”

Calling Afghanistan and the border with neighboring Pakistan the “central front of the war on terror,” Obama said that the Pakistani government needed to be persuaded that cracking down on the Taliban and al-Qaeda is important. “I think that message has not been sent,” he argued:

Obama: The United States has to take a regional approach to the problem. Just as we can’t be myopic and focus only on Iraq, we also can’t think that we can solve the security problems here in Afghanistan without engaging the Pakistan government.

Logan: How do you compel Pakistan to act?

Obama: Well, you know, I think that the U.S. government provides an awful lot of aid to Pakistan, provides a lot of military support to Pakistan. And to send a clear message to Pakistan that this is important, to them as well as to us, that I think — that message has not been sent.

Critics would say that the argument that Pakistan just “needs to be told” that fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda militants is “important” — even though thousands of Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks in 2007, and President Musharraf has survived three al-Qaeda assassination attempts — doesn’t take into account the more pressing problems of the reliability and loyalty of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps units or the pro-Taliban factions of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.

-Iraq: Obama was given the “red carpet treatment” in Iraq, which included high-profile presidential-like meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other senior Iraqi politicians. Obama “reaped a whirlwind of positive coverage in Iraq” — the major story to come out of this visit is that Nouri al-Maliki reportedly announced that he believed Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan was “the right timeframe for a withdrawal.”

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh clarified that these were “time horizons,” not specific dates, but that the Iraqi government hoped U.S. troops could be out of Iraq by the end of 2010. Obama’s plan had called for most U.S. troops to be withdrawn by March 2010. The apparent approval of Obama’s withdrawal plan (or something close to it) from the head of the Iraqi government gives credibility to Obama’s position.

NBC’s “Today” called Obama’s visit to Iraq “picture-perfect.”

Obama also met with senior U.S. military commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who gave Obama a helicopter tour of Iraq and a briefing on the situation on the ground. Although their encounter was described as friendly, and photos show the two smiling and shaking hands, observers said Obama and Petreaus “agreed to disagree” about the feasibility of Obama’s withdrawal timeline in an “animated” conversation.

Obama also met with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province, who reportedly warned him to be careful when withdrawing U.S. troops.

Obama asked the tribal leaders whether Iraq’s security forces were ready to take over security, said [Ali Hatem] Suleiman [a top Awakening tribal leader]. They informed him that while Iraq’s forces had improved, the province was still fragile and faced threats from al-Qaeda in Iraq.

“You can pull out and withdraw all the forces in Iraq, but you have to keep the Marines in our province because we still have problems with the Islamic parties and we can face a bad situation at any moment,” Suleiman said they told Obama.

They also warned Obama to be cautious with his plan to withdraw U.S. combat forces. “You have think carefully about the area,” they told Obama, according to Suleiman.

Though the coverage of Obama’s Iraq trip received saturation coverage in U.S. media outlets, Iraqi sources barely mentioned it. According to London’s Times, most Iraqis were reportedly “underwhelmed” by the “media circus” that accompanied Obama’s visit.

The only mistake that has been pointed out during Obama’s visit to Iraq has been that Obama overstepped his bounds as a presidential candidate.

David Gergen and Gloria Borger, on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″: “We only have one president at a time.”

David Gergen: “I think it was the first — Barack Obama made the first mistake of his trip, in my judgment, in releasing a statement in which he said exactly what Maliki had said in those conversations. We have a long tradition in this country that we only have one president at a time. He’s the commander in chief and the negotiator in chief. I cannot remember a campaign which a rival seeking the presidency has been in a position negotiating a war that’s under way with another party outside the country. I think he leaves himself open to the charge tonight that he’s meddling, that this is not his role, that he can be the critic, but he’s not the negotiator. We have a president who does that. So, I think the underlying facts support him, but I think it would be a real mistake — and I think it was a mistake — to get into these conversations and let it be used politically.”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “That’s interesting. Gloria, do you think this is the first mistake he made on this trip?”

Gloria Borger: “You know, it’s very interesting, I do agree with David. And Candy, in her earlier piece, talked about walking the fine line between being this candidate and being presumptuous. And I think that he may just have crossed that, because, you know, it is a tradition. You don’t talk about these private conversations. And it’s not up to Barack Obama right now to negotiate troop withdrawals. It’s up to Barack Obama to be on a fact-finding mission, which is indeed what he has said he was on.”

- Jordan: Obama had been criticized by his opponents for having never mentioned Jordan — a key U.S. ally in the Middle East — in any of his foreign policy speeches, or even on his website. He visited Amman today, where he will meet with King Abdullah II.

On a bizarre note, Politico is reporting that the Obama campaign has banned its staff from wearing green clothing during visits in Jordan and Israel:

AMMAN, Jordan—An Obama campaign ban on green clothing during the candidate’s visits to Israel and Jordan has created wide puzzlement among observers of the Middle East.

In a memo to reporters, described as “a few guidelines we sent staff before departure to the Middle East,” Obama advance staffer Peter Newell laid out rules on attire for Jordan and Israel.

First among them: “Do not wear green.”

An Obama aide explained to reporters that green is the color associated with the militant Palestinian group Hamas. But while the color does appear on Hamas banners, there is no particular symbolism to wearing green clothes, experts said.

Moreover, green is more generally seen as a symbol of Islam.

Richard Bulliet, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia, told Politico that such a ban was “bizarre,” and that it was likely that the campaign was “being overcautious to a ridiculous degree,” worried that if Obama or his staff wore green he would again face rumors that he is secretly a Muslim.

Next up…Israel and the Palestinian Territories:

Obama will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories after his visit to Jordan. The candidate’s trip into the West Bank (he will be meeting with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah) has stirred up some controversy due to the fact that Obama’s security must be coordinated with Fatah — whose militant branch, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, is reportedly being deployed to protect Sen. Obama. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

According to security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Obama’s Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Obama, particularly in securing the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

[…]Brigades leaders, speaking to WND on condition of anonymity, confirmed they will participate in protecting Obama as official members of the PA’s security forces.

[…]One Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades member who doubles as a PA security force officer and who is set to protect Obama, joked if there was any threat to the presidential candidate it will come from Israel:

“Maybe the Israelis will try something because of Obama’s policy on Israel, which the Zionists don’t like, but we will certainly protect Obama. We are professional security forces,” the Al Aqsa member said.

I don’t think I’m alone in being concerned for Obama’s safety in such circumstances. Tony Blair recently canceled a trip to Gaza because of reported “security threats” from members of Hamas (which would have been tasked with coordinating his security for the visit).

The only consolation is that Brigades members have previously served as PA security officers for visiting U.S. officials without incident — but the intense media coverage and high-profile nature of this visit is rather unnerving.