After ignoring Iraq for months (when things were going well), the Mainstream Media returned to reporting on Iraq with a vengeance when it appeared that things weren't going so well. Well, the MSM got it wrong (again): Remind me again — who’s losing in Basra? posted at 9:48 am on March 30, 2008 by Ed Morrissey When the Iraqi government finally took the long-expected action to establish control of Basra after the British pullback left it in the hands of militias and gangsters, suddenly the media declared that the country had reached the brink of collapse. They highlighted stories of defections from the Iraqi military and opined that the surge had failed. Moqtada al-Sadr would finally ...

Dan Henninger wonders if a liberal falls in the forest and no other liberal recognizes it, did he make a sound?

Bill Clinton claimed the mantle of "First Black President" (sorry, Obama). If actions speak louder than words (and they do), then W is the "First African President." First African President By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Foreign Affairs: George W. Bush has been singled out as the American president who has done the most for Africa. So where's the recognition, both in the media and the black community, of this worthy achievement? Bill Clinton might have been America's first black president, but it seems he didn't do as much for Africa as Bush has. Bob Geldof, Irish rocker and Africa activist, says the Texas oilman, who is wrapping up his second trip to the continent, "has done more ...

The prevailing orthodoxy of the academy (not to mention the mainstream media and all of liberalism) is the theory that some natural process animated previously inanimate matter which, over billions of years, evolved into all manner of living creature. If you are in the academy and you voice any doubt about Darwin's unlikely theory (as he himself did) you may find yourself expelled. Every generation has a rebel. Ours is Ben Stein. Dare to watch the super trailer. It's fantastic.

In desperation, al Qaeda has shifted tactics by strapping bombs on mentally deranged women and sending them into markets--only to use remote detonators to blow up their couriers and all those around them. Where is the outrage? For those who don't think the MSM is biased, just do a Google News search on this story (which will yield 533 stories) versus Abu Grhaib (an worn-out, old story that still generated 756 "news" stories today) or Guantanamo Bay (which yielded 4,843 "news" stories today.) From The Long War Journal: Al Qaeda in Iraq has pulled off two mass-casualty terror bombings in markets in Baghdad. The attacks, which were carried out by mentally impaired women, claimed the lives of at least 73 Iraqi ...

We heard for years that Iraq was lost in a civil war. It was never true. Today, the WaPo discovered that 90% of the insurgents were foreign fighters. Time, once again, to rethink the media template. Papers Paint New Portrait of Iraq's Foreign Insurgents By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 21, 2008; A01 Muhammad Ayn-al-Nas, a 26-year-old Moroccan, started his journey in Casablanca. After flying to Turkey and then to Damascus, he reached his destination in a small Iraqi border town on Jan. 31, 2007. He was an economics student back home, he told the al-Qaeda clerk who interviewed him on arrival. Asked what sort of work he hoped to do in Iraq, Nas replied: "Martyr." Algerian Watsef Mussab, 29, ...

This was the headline on an AP story this evening: "Clashes Kill Nearly 50 in Southern Iraq." The headline should have been "Despite Attacks, Iraqi Troops Protect Millions of Pilgrims." BAGHDAD — Government troops in southern Iraq fought with a millennial religious militia group on Friday in clashes that left more than 40 people dead, but the troops successfully protected millions of pilgrims on the first day of Ashura, the largest religious holiday for Iraq’s Shiite majority and one frequently marred by violence.

From Investor's Business Daily: Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Thursday, November 01, 2007 4:30 PM PT Journalism: The debate is over. A consensus has been reached. On global warming? No, on how Democrats are favored on television, radio and in the newspapers. Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans. Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans." The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative. Breaking it down by candidates, the survey found that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the favorites. "Obama's front page coverage was 70% positive and 9% negative, and Clinton's was similarly 61% positive and 13% negative." In stories about Republicans, on the other hand, the tone was positive in only a quarter of the stories; in four in 10 it was negative. The study also discovered that newspaper stories "tended to be focused more on political matters and less on issues and ideas than the media overall. In all, 71% of newspaper stories concentrated on the 'game,' compared with 63% overall." Television has a similar problem. Only 10% of TV stories were focused on issues, and here, too, Democrats get the better of it.

The fires are raging in California. The media's all over it. In Iraq, the fires of al Qaeda terrorism are being vanquished. The media yawns. This says it all: the turnaround in Iraq is "the greatest story never told" in the mainstream media, that is. The Greatest Story Never Told Military progress in Iraq goes unnoticed by the press. by Dean Barnett . . . IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS, the story in Iraq has changed dramatically. The numbers on Icasualties.org have reflected that change. The metric that most animates the mainstream media and the American public is the count of American casualties. In the spring, with "the surge" just being rolled out, over 100 American soldiers a month died between April and June. Even though the surge was just beginning, it was about that time that Harry Reid asserted, "As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results." As an analysis of our military prospects, Reid's comments were risible. Of course, Reid didn't intend to provide a serious military analysis. Rather, he tried to cynically capitalize on American deaths for political gain. Since Reid's ill-timed comment, the situation for American soldiers in Iraq has taken a sharp turn for the better. The accompanying graph clearly shows the trend, but the situation can perhaps be best summed up by looking at the numbers in May compared to the numbers so far from October. In May, 120 American soldiers died in combat, and six more died from non-hostile causes. With October three-fourths complete, 20 American soldiers have died in combat while eight others have died non-hostilities related deaths. It would be one thing if this improvement transpired because American commanders, spooked by the relatively high death tolls in the spring, decided to focus their mission on force protection. But that hasn't been the case. American troops have been engaging the enemy more actively over the past several months than at any time during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and they've done so to spectacular effect. The results of the surge, or "the escalation" as Harry Reid derisively called it, have been obvious in the Icasualties.org numbers. Before the surge, a bad month would claim the lives of roughly 3,000 Iraqi civilians and security force members. In February '07, the exact number was 3,014 Iraqi casualties. In March, the figure was 2,977. As the surge began to have its effects, that number dropped to 1674 in August. In September, with the surge taking full effect, the numbers showed a profound change--the Iraqi death toll plunged to 848. Happily, September's figures don't appear to be an aberration. October has seen 502 Iraqi casualties so far. If the trend continues though the end of October, the final number should be around 650 for the entire month. That represents better than an 80 percent improvement from the war's nadir. YOU'D THINK THIS would be a big story. After all, the mainstream media makes such a show of "supporting the troops" at every turn, you'd think it would rush to report the amazing story of our soldiers accomplishing what many observers declared "impossible" and "unwinnable" not so long ago. It hasn't worked out that way.

Would anyone know there are amusement parks in Iraq unless they were attacked ? The Times of India reports that a car bomb was detonated as "families were on their way home after spending the day frolicking in an amusement park during a Muslim holiday in western Baghdad, according to police." The six people killed and 25 wounded included women and children. Women and children, again. Would anyone know that there are ice cream stores and clinics and pharmacies in Iraq unless they were near a bomb blast? The Times of India story continues, "Ice cream stores and food ...