MSM – Quiet On Iraq Until Bad News Is Found

CNN has put up a article on Iraq entitled “2007 now the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Iraq,” while the headline is true the fact remains that the MSM has been quiet on Iraq ever since the numbers started dropping, as CDR Salamander shows us quite well:

As the numbers went down, so did the reporting.  Why be bothered to print good news when they could just wait until something, anything, bad to print.

But of course, the only reason there is so much good news to hide is because, according to Representative David Obey from Wisconsin, “we’ve killed everybody:” (h/t Baltimore Reporter)

“One of the reason we’ve had incidents of violence, sectarian violence go
down is because they are running out of people to kill,”

“They’ve killed so many in so many areas, that there are fewer opportunity
targets, if you want to put it that way, for each side,” Obey said. “I welcome
any reduction in the level in violence for whatever reasons it occurs, but I
don’t think that tells us much for what the future is going to
be.”

And TNR, that bastion of ethical reporting, now questions what the Democrats will do if, God forbid, things really are turning around in Iraq: (h/t Hot Air)

It hasn’t become much of a campaign issue–yet–but for the first time in a
long while the news from Iraq isn’t unrelentingly ghastly. Some previously
hard-to-imagine glimmers of hope are now emerging. Of course there are a
thousand caveats here, and Slate’s Phil Carter has a good summation of them. But
this weekend an experienced Iraq correspondent–someone who has been extremely
bleak about the war in the past–told me he thinks it’s really possible that the
country is turning a corner.

Which raises all sorts of secondary but fascinating political questions: What
do the Democrats do if–yes: if, if, if–the surge appears to have succeeded? (Or
at least seems, to voters, to have succeeded: I realize the tribal shift in
Anbar, for instance, wasn’t imposed by US troops–although my correspondent
friend said surge forces did enable us to exploit Sunni tribal cooperation and
root out al Qaeda.) Indeed, if Iraq somehow stabilizes and even incrementally
improves, doesn’t that affect the presidential campaign in important and
unpredictable ways?

Since the Democrats have made Iraq their main talking point I would have to say yes, it most certainly effects their campaign.  But I suppose they can do as Obey just did and blame the good news on the big bad bully killing everyone. 

Curt

See author page