Pulitzers for Green Zone Denizens?

Ralph Peters has a very cogent RealClearPolitics article on the shortcomings of the American press and their handmaidens, the domestic opposition to the war. I would be interested in what happened to John Burns, the excellent NYT reporter whose objectivity evidently did not suit the gloom-and-doom agenda of the editors.

I blogged on Peters' observations that of the roughly two dozen Baghdad reporters from the MSM majors, almost all [with the exception of the WaPo's Arabic speaking Habib] sent out Iraqi stringers who quickly learned that good news was no news to these people, and obediently went out and fetched [or in a morgue story, invented] gruesome "facts" to fit the mindset back in NYC and LA.

Peters' piece today, entitled "Myths of Iraq," begins with the theme:

During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

Seventy percent of the American people polled recently thought Iraq was headed for or already in a civil war. But how do these people get such tendentious opinions? Former G2 Officer Peters has a few mythbuster bullet points:

"Consider just a few of the inaccuracies served up by the media:

Claims of civil war. In the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a flurry of sectarian attacks inspired wild media claims of a collapse into civil war. It didn't happen. Driving and walking the streets of Baghdad, I found children playing and, in most neighborhoods, business as usual. Iraq can be deadly, but, more often, it's just dreary.

Iraqi disunity. Factional differences are real, but overblown in the reporting. Few Iraqis support calls for religious violence. After the Samarra bombing, only rogue militias and criminals responded to the demagogues' calls for vengeance. Iraqis refused to play along, staging an unrecognized triumph of passive resistance.

Expanding terrorism. On the contrary, foreign terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have lost ground. They've alienated Iraqis of every stripe. Iraqis regard the foreigners as murderers, wreckers and blasphemers, and they want them gone. The Samarra attack may, indeed, have been a tipping point--against the terrorists.

Hatred of the U.S. military. If anything surprised me in the streets of Baghdad, it was the surge in the popularity of U.S. troops among both Shias and Sunnis. In one slum, amid friendly adult waves, children and teenagers cheered a U.S. Army patrol as we passed. Instead of being viewed as occupiers, we're increasingly seen as impartial and well-intentioned.

The appeal of the religious militias. They're viewed as mafias. Iraqis want them disarmed and disbanded. Just ask the average citizen.

The failure of the Iraqi army. Instead, the past month saw a major milestone in the maturation of Iraq's military. During the mini-crisis that followed the Samarra bombing, the Iraqi army put over 100,000 soldiers into the country's streets. They defused budding confrontations and calmed the situation without killing a single civilian. And Iraqis were proud to have their own army protecting them. The Iraqi army's morale soared as a result of its success.

Reconstruction efforts have failed. Just not true. The American goal was never to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in its entirety. Iraqis have to do that. Meanwhile, slum-dwellers utterly neglected by Saddam Hussein's regime are getting running water and sewage systems for the first time. The Baathist regime left the country in a desolate state while Saddam built palaces. The squalor has to be seen to be believed. But the hopeless now have hope.

The electricity system is worse than before the war. Untrue
again.

If there were an MSM major discourse on how things are going, such observations would at least enter into a national conversation on how the war is or is not going. But the monopoly media of the Left Coasts relentlessly drills the myths into the public's consciousness, and the few dissenters have no bully pulpit save perhaps FOX-TV and the WSJ to propound an alternative and realistic description of events on the ground.

However, there are signs of a tipping point in today's Guardian, of all places, and there are a lot of rumors that the venerable mouthpiece for the left has experienced a palace revolution which will bring fresh voices like Mark Steyn and Harry's Place into the pantheon of socialist PC.

Another straw in the wind is the admission of the MSM majors that Saddam got rid of his WMD and not even his top generals were aware of it. So the "Bush Lied" mantra is discredited, although the hyperventilating hysterics will continue the chants.

So there may be hope of a genuine discourse, dialogue, or at least debate over the major issues in Iraq.

I only hope that when Moqtada Al-Sadr makes claims that "the insurgents and the Americans" were responsible for atrocities, that some wonderful young Americans don't pay the ultimate price.