[Southack]

"I think Iraq is a tragic disaster (though for the time being the country is probably better off than it was when Saddam was around--but only, I fear, for the time being)."

It's perception. The mainstream media portrays Iraq as being in chaos or at least at the threshold of near-anarchy. They show a suicide bombing here, a church attack there, a roadside bomb, mortars shelling American positions, etc. Whew!

Furthermore, the media shows places that it either collectively likes or collectively doesn't care much about one way or the other as near-utopian.

Rio, for instance, is portrayed as a calm paradise...but in Brazil on average every day there are 110 civilians shot dead in daily gang wars and crime sprees. Yet there it is in the news media, the calm, peaceful, paradise of Rio.

In constrast, you'd be hard-pressed to show 110 civilians killed by the Iraqi insurgents on their bloodiest of days over there. Typically, there will be 1 or 2 Americans killed each day there and 60 to 70 Iraqis (including bad guys) taking daily dirt naps.

110 Brazilians *every* day...versus 1 or 2 Americans.

Yet Rio is paradise and Iraq is chaos. Go figure.

5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[Southack]

c#40

[Perlstein]

Southhack accuses me of relying on the mainstream media for my perception of Iraq. I don't. I go to the Brookings Institute's Iraq Index--

http://www.brookings.org/iraqindex

Which is updated daily, mostly with Pentagon statistics. I invite everyone to bookmark it. The picture it shows, I submit, is not pretty.

But at least with the raw data, one can judge for oneself.