Mr. Mayer, you seem willing to be neutral in examining and reporting issues and events, so I consider you a rare exception in my following comments. During my lifetime I’ve witnessed an evolution in journalism. The primary focus changed from information to entertainment. Journalists also took on the task of “raising the consciousness” of their readers, listeners, and viewers. Rather than objective reporting of current events we were provided sequenced, subjective campaigns about hunger, homelessness, unemployment, poverty or other selected travesty. Most journalists arrogantly decided it is not enough to simply fulfill the public’s need for truthful information and allow them to form their own honest opinions. It has become necessary to withhold, promote, edit, and nuance the news to sway public opinion and mold our society according to “higher ideals” than the folks would reach on their own. The power to inform is accompanied by the power to misinform. Power often corrupts. Manipulation of the news from Iraq is just another example of the selective reporting that has damaged the integrity and public image of the profession. Vetting the news requires tremendous effort to identify and filter the hidden agenda of the provider.

You danced around the real reason the press has relegated almost all stories from Iraq to the back pages, Alex. One political party and their willing mouthpieces in the media invested everything to make the battle front in Iraq a failure. Now that it’s on the verge of becoming one of this country’s most remarkable military and diplomatic successes, they’re doing everything they can to hide it.

The Malaki government’s dramatic political gains over the past year, the almost complete routing of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the near total collapse of the Sadrists in the south is due in no small part to the successful counterinsurgency strategy of Gen Petraeus. A great deal of credit must also go to Pres Bush for having the political courage and good sense to the let the general and the thousands of men and women under his command carry it out. Several prominent Democrats and a shamefully partisan media proclaimed that mission a complete failure before it had a chance to take effect. One presidential candidate even went so far as to publically call Gen Petraeus a liar and the NY Times printed a full page ad that questioned his honor and loyalty.

For major news organizations to suddenly do an about face and report accurately what’s happened in the past year and expect the public to take them seriously would mean they have to repudiate just about everything they’ve printed in the past five years. This would reveal themselves as the biased, psuedo-intellectual frauds that they are. They aren’t about to do that.

The liberal controlled MSM loathes any success by President Bush and the current administration. Iraq is a success story of unprecedented historic proportions. History will show that the US, and President Bush, initiated bold, risky, courageous and bitterly unpopular moves to establish democracy in a part of the world that knew only oppression for generations. Democracy and the free market will continue to flourish in Iraq, in spite of liberals’ constant attempt to sabotage President Bush’s amazing record of success.
Liberals lie and disregard stark truth because they choose to refuse to believe in any absolute truth. Absolute truth will hold them accountable. Choosing to believe a lie rather than the truth, they have become fools.
The absolute truth is that democracy and the free market works. Not socialism. Liberals are trying to create Orwell’s “1984” and hide the truth from the people. Their omission of reporting success is alarming, even outrageous.
Liberals: take warning: your day of reckoning is nigh!

If people take the time to read further down in the New York Times article this is what they will see:
“It’s terrible,” Ms. Logan said in the telephone interview. She called it a financial decision. “We can’t afford to maintain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time,” she said. “It’s so expensive and the security risks are so great that it’s prohibitive.”

Mr. Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons.

Kind of changes the arguement, doesn’t it?

“I’d be willing to bet that the correlation between the drop in violence, insurgent attacks, and U.S. casualties in Iraq and a drop in news coverage is by no means coincidental.”

Wow, just wow. You might want to wait until you spend a couple years in the real world before you start making any bets. Here’ a roundup of the violence in Iraq *from a single day*: http://www.juancole.com/2008/06/councilman-kills-2-gis-mortar-fire.html

From that link (which cites info from McClatchy, here’s just a tiny sample:

“A city council member in Mada’in (Salman Pak) abruptly opened fire on Americans who had been in a meeting with him. He killed 2 US troops and wounded 4 other Americans.”

“Guerrillas in Udaim, about an hour north of Baquba, guerrillas bombarded an Awakening Council unit with mortar fire, killing 10 and wounding 24 of them.”

“Gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint manned by Iraqi Police in New Mosul, south Mosul killing one policeman and one civilian female, severely injuring two civilians.”

Anyone who bothers to pay attention would know that most days are similar. Juancole.com is a good source of the news that the mainstream media now thinks is not worth reporting. Please do some research before your next post.

There is a lot of news both good and bad not being reported in Iraq. The media has lost its objectivity. The network news operations are a joke and cable is full of spinmeisters on all sides.

You forgot to mention that the “Harvard-educated” blogger Richard Fernandez, whom you agree with, is actually hosted by Pajamas Media, a right-wing blog founded by the same guy who runs Little Green Footballs. That is, the same guys who have been telling us “we’re winning!” for the past five years. So much for an objective analysis.

Wow, the more I look into this post the more I see how full of giant, gaping holes it is. The reason that you don’t see headlines like “Roadside Bomb attacks decrease by 90%” is because its not true! The methodology of that article was to compare U.S. troop deaths in May ‘08 to those in May ‘07. The problem(s)? (1) May ‘08 is clearly an outlier; April ‘08 had twice as many U.S. deaths than May and June ‘08 already has more. And May ‘07 had more deaths than all the months around it. (2) The article equates “attacks” on Americans with “fatalities”. There might still be the same number of attacks with less fatalities, which hardly would be a sign of Iraq being more stable. (3) By focusing exclusively on American forces, it ignores the fact that roadside bombs often target Iraqi security forces. (see the above link to the Juan Cole piece). Considering that American forces have been traveling on Iraqi roads less since the surge began, this is a pretty significant omission.

Adam S. You may be missing the point. I was against a ground war in Iraq before it began and agreed with Colin Powell’s warning “if you break it, you own it.” The sectarian violence in the Middle East goes back centuries, and does not lend itself to Western style democracy. Once there were boots on the ground, however, I became committed to victory rather than invested in defeat to validate my opinion. Despite the valor and supreme efforts of the troops, the strategic conduct of the war has been terrible from the beginning. If a surge worked in 2007, why didn’t the surge happen at the outset? The point is, the media should provide the American people with complete, unbiased, unfiltered information and allow us to do our own analysis and form our opinions as you have done. It is commendable that you do the additional research needed to support your opinion. But, if you don’t recognize the bias and selectivity in the mainstream media coverage on Iraq you may be the one needing a few more years in the “real” world.

Adam S:

With all due respect, the facts completely contradict your assertion that violence in Iraq is “as bad as ever.” Your “analysis” falls short on several levels:

1) May 2008 was not an “outlier” in terms of casualties. In April, 50 Americans were killed, compared to 105 in April 2007. In March, 40 Americans were killed, compared to 80 in March 2007. In February, 30 Americans were killed, compared to 80 in February 2007. I could go on. Oh, and as for June 2008, we’re currently at 22 (compared to 19 in May). June 2007 saw 100 U.S. troops killed. (p.s. — I’m getting these numbers from the Post-Dispatch graphic tracking U.S. military deaths by month, as found in today’s print edition, page A4.)

In fact, you’re wrong about the attacks maintaining the same frequency, too. If you look at the month-by-month totals since the surge began to take effect in mid-2007, you’ll see that there has been a steady and dramatic decline in not only U.S. casualties, but a) roadside bomb/IED attacks; b) attacks on Iraqi infrastructure and government facilities; and c) insurgent mortar and rocket attacks. A nice graph displaying all the above information can be seen here:

http://iraqstatusreport.com//images/stories/image001.jpg

And I’m not alone in noticing this, by the way. Many people who have been consistently critical of the war have been acknowledging the progress of the surge.

–From a Washington Post editorial two weeks ago:

“While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

…Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans.”

–Even the French admit the progress that has taken place in Iraq:

“BAGHDAD (AFP) — French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday that the security situation in Iraq was improving and reaffirmed France’s willingness to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.

“I have the feeling that things are better. Statistics show a drop in security incidents,” Kouchner told AFP after a working lunch with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari on the last day of his two-day visit to Iraq.

There is “an improvement in the situation in Iraq,” he said.

Kouchner also voiced satisfaction at efforts by the Iraqis to take charge of their own country, saying they were making “progress.”

–Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings Institution fellow who opposed the war and has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration:

“O’Hanlon explained that the last three months has been the “spring of the blossoming of Iraqi security forces” and Iraq is on an “impressive trajectory” although we have not yet “reached a stable end point.” He stressed that the 80% reduction in civilian violence was much better than he thought possible. He went through a detailed review of Basra, conceding that Maliki’s actions took the Americans by surprise and that in the first week things went poorly. However, by the second week two brigades were deployed from Al Anbar (a testimony to massive improvements in Iraq security force logistics) and that the mission was successful, allowing the Iraqi army and national police force to now control the streets of Basra.

He credits the military success with allowing for a “fundamental rearrangement” of Iraqi politics, observing that Maliki is now “flying high” with new found respect from Sunnis. The big picture take away, he says, it that having achieved remarkable success with major issues we now can begin to address “second and third order problems” such as insuring that military forces “stay in their lane” and do not subvert civilian leadership.”

–Andrew Sullivan, a well-known liberal blogger and die-hard Obama supporter, offered his candidate this advice:

“The trap Obama must not be caught in is one of excessive pessimism. Conditions now favor expeditious withdrawal more than they did only a few months ago. But the manner of withdrawal, its pace, and its concomitant diplomacy now require a different cast, and may require an even different one next February and March. None of this means that this war was not a mistake; it does suggest it need not in the medium term be a catastrophe. Petraeus deserves the lion’s share of the credit; luck and time and the self-defeating nihilism of the Jihadists have helped. But Bush and McCain equally merit points for pursuing the surge, even though the metrics pointed to failure. Obama needs to capitalize on these gains, not dismiss them.”

*****

The reduction in violence in Iraq is undisputed. Are attacks at “zero per day?” Of course not, but to imply that if they aren’t, then the U.S. is making no progress in Iraq and it’s a total failure is simply ludicrous. Such a conclusion requires willful blindness of the evidence and a deliberate refusal to allow changing facts on the ground to influence one’s pre-conceived conclusions about the war.