Good News and Better News

Jack Kelly from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is rapidly becoming essential. Today's piece on Iraq is an essential.

The good news? There's a quagmire in Iraq.

And it's the media, not the Coalition, that is bogged down:

Those who get their news from the "mainstream" media are surprised by developments in Iraq, as they were surprised by our swift victory in Afghanistan, the sudden fall of Saddam Hussein, the success of the Afghan election and the success of the Iraqi election.

Journalists demand accountability from political leaders for "quagmires" which exist chiefly in the imagination of journalists. But when will journalists be held to account for getting every major development in the war on terror wrong?

The better news?

The elections might have been exactly the turning point the supporters of liberation claimed, and that the left denied:

The number of insurgent attacks has fallen off significantly since the Fallujah offensive last November, and the attacks that are being made are less effective.

There are about 50-60 attacks a day on coalition forces, about half the pre-Fallujah level. Almost all are within the Sunni Triangle, and most are ineffective.

Harbinger of the media quagmire? When Democrat front-runners start defecting from their orthodoxy:

Proof of this was provided by Sen. Hillary Clinton. Iraq is functioning quite well, she said in a press conference in Baghdad Feb. 19. The recent rash of suicide attacks is a sign the insurgency is failing, she said.

"When politicians like [Clinton] start flocking to Iraq to bask in the light of its success, then you know that the corner has been turned," a reader of his blog wrote to Bay.

Clinton endorsing the progress of the war is like Captain Smith jumping on the first lifeboat.

What'll be the real proof that the media is defeated in Iraq? When the left starts trying to claim credit for democracy in the Middle East, the way they eventualy tried to claim credit for victory in the Cold War.

Oh, wait - John Stewart already started, approving of the American achievement in the Iraqi election in the first person plural.

Posted by Mitch at February 27, 2005 10:26 AM | TrackBack