Iraq

You probably don't know this, said Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but U.S. troops are currently fighting the biggest and most important battle of the Iraq war so far. Several thousand 'œhard-core al Qaida fighters' have been chased out of Baghdad and have fled to Iraq's Diyala province, and 10,000 coalition troops are closing in to finish them off. If the operation'”Arrowhead Ripper'”succeeds, it could prove decisive in the war to stabilize Iraq, which may explain why the mainstream media is hardly mentioning it. Most editors and pundits are now so committed to the narrative of Iraq as an epic, bungled disaster that they 'œtreat good news from Iraq as no news.'

Can you really still be wearing those rose-colored glasses? said Frank Rich in The New York Times. For four years, the Bush administration has insisted that victory was just around the corner. The latest installment in that fairy tale is 'œthe surge' of 30,000 additional troops, which the new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, promised would show results by September. Already, the White House is furiously backing away from that target month, and the Pentagon has launched a new 'œpropaganda offensive,' withholding statistics on the sharp increase of attacks in Baghdad's supposedly secure Green Zone. The White House's real battle plan for Iraq is to disguise the true scale of this catastrophe, 'œno matter what the cost,' and keep stalling until Bush leaves office and it becomes the next president's problem.

Kurt Andersen

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