All but won: The media can't see that Iraq is close to secure

Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division, roared with laughter as he recalled the increasing missteps of the resistance in Iraq in an interview earlier this month with British journalist Toby Harnden, writing for The Spectator.

Proof of this was provided by Sen. Hillary Clinton. Iraq is functioning quite well, she said in a press conference in Baghdad Feb. 19. The recent rash of suicide attacks is a sign the insurgency is failing, she said.

"When politicians like [Clinton] start flocking to Iraq to bask in the light of its success, then you know that the corner has been turned," a reader of his blog wrote to Bay.

More substantive signs abound. The performance of Iraqi security forces is improving, as are their numbers. Nearly 10,000 men showed up at a southern Iraqi military base Feb. 14 to volunteer for 5,000 openings. Only 6,000 had been expected.

Sunni Arab politicians have admitted they made a big boo-boo in boycotting the Jan. 30 election, and are pleading to be included in the political process. Some ex-Baathists are seeking terms for laying down their arms.

Those who get their news from the "mainstream" media are surprised by developments in Iraq, as they were surprised by our swift victory in Afghanistan, the sudden fall of Saddam Hussein, the success of the Afghan election and the success of the Iraqi election.

Journalists demand accountability from political leaders for "quagmires" which exist chiefly in the imagination of journalists. But when will journalists be held to account for getting every major development in the war on terror wrong?

Of course we can hold them to account, and no we don't have to just ignore them and slum with also rans while they control all the mikes. Whether we will is another matter. But we could easily -

(1) sue them ten thousand times a day until they plead with a judge for class action status (for libel, for slander, for profiting from criminal acts, etc (2) buy their corporations and fire them wholesale (3) write new laws that demolish their clubby ownership & protection schemes, smash their large networks to atoms, require them to share their airwaves with all their competitors (4) tax them narrowly in targeted manners until their heads split (sick a thousand lawyering and regulating accountants on them) and no major corporation wants them mixed with its own books (5) subsidize and pave the road up for their rivals (favor cable over broadcast, radio over TV, books over newspapers, in all sorts of regulations) (6) create and lavishly fund entire colleges and think tanks that do nothing but produce and polish conservative journalists - no liberals need apply (7) nickel and dime them with petty inconveniences about access, press passes, security help, travel help (let 'em wait five years for a visa to podunk, go their on their own plane, etc) (8) savagely ridicule them in public at every cocktail party, toss drinks in their faces, goad them into acting up in order to knock them down (9) expose every detail about their pasts and private lives, connections and personal agendas (10) give them zero access to anything, ever - not a scrap not a line, talk to the PR department, read our FAQ, go stuff yourselves.

They are not remotely untouchable. We know how men fight in modern society. If we wanted to make their lives hell we could, easily. Our leaders instead think they should avoid "making them mad" in the hopes they will "say something positive" - which is delusional by now, but still how they think.

"Journalists" in Iraq mostly just sit in their hotel rooms. Eventually, NY calls and tells them, "Say XY or Z". The "journalists" who have no idea what is going on other than what they are being fed from NY merely parrots what they are told.

So where do you imagine the folks in NY are getting the info in the first place?

You guessed it...Arab news sources.

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