Well to start with you should try credible sources. Brookings in a Leftist think take and the NY Slimes the newspaper of record for America's enemies.
To answer their false premise. Neither. The situation in Iraq was never as bleak as the hysterics in the drama queen media made it out to be. The problem has always been that the Drama Queens manufacture the US "News" product have always been more concerned with using Iraq for domestic politics then honestly reporting the situation in Iraq.
The problem has been an inability for Junk Media types, the average American voter, and our politicians to grasp that not every situation can be resolved in 30 mins or less with breaks for commericals. Neither can a country be cured of the effects of 40 years of mass murder, rape and oppression overnight.
The problem has also been that the spoiled brats of the Boomer generation that run America's "News" media and populate it's political class have always had vastly unrealistic expectation of how fast things could happen in Iraq.
The dirty secret is "The Surge" has always been as much about changing the the Junk Media's propaganda template about Iraq here at home as it has been about Military action in Iraq.
You are exactly right! I'll just give one instance, of many, to back up that assertion. The claim that went unchecked that the US killed 100,000 Iraqis by 2004 and then killed 600,000 Iraqis by 2006 was from a completely bogus report called the Lancet Report that did not do a count but rather extrapolated a sample.
The actual count by the group IRAQ BODY COUNT puts the total at about 70,000 right now and most of that is buy the insurgency and includes insurgents. And IRAQ BODY COUNT has a count of civilians killed by the coalition in 2006 at 526 Iraqis killed and in 2005 only some 300 killed.
That's a far cry from saying the US has killed 600,000 Iraqis yet that MSM let that go unchecked and unchallenged throughout this war.
SCREW THE NYTs! I don't give a rat's nasty tail which way they think the wind is blowing... Hang'em all...
That's about it.
That's about it.
Brookings leans left, but they have been pretty straightforward in charting the course of the Iraq conflict. They’ve certainly been critical, but also haven’t been shy to note progress.