Agenda Journalism: Dwelling on American Deaths & Enemy Successes

If you ran a newspaper and wanted to report objectively on the Iraq war, what formula would you follow? No doubt your headline would be about our main actions in the war zone that day. Your reporting would begin with our major activities, both the successes and failures of our units. As a part of reporting on these activities, you would make note of friendly casualties. We must never lose site of the sacrifice we are asking our soldiers to make as part of the war effort. We must acknowledge them and honor them.

But what if you wanted to push a particular agenda? What if you wanted to maintain only a facade of objectivity while doing your utomost to undercut support for the war in Iraq among Americans? How would you do it?

The answer of course is to place the greatest emphasis on the most negative news concerning the war. That would mean emphasizing news of enemy successes and friendly casualties over all else. It would mean reporting a butcher's bill as the headline and dwelling on that bill in the lead paragraphs every day. Enter the Washington Post Foreign Desk.

The Washington Post's Foreign Desk is not reporting the news objectively. They are shaping it in an effort to manipulate public opinion about the Iraq war. The formula that they follow is, by now, well established. Their daily headline on the news from Iraq announces the number of American or friendly casualties. Usually the majority of the story then dwells on these deaths. Only then, at the end of the article, is there any news about the activities of our military in Iraq. And even then, the news of our activities in Iraq and the successes we are having is more often then not incomplete and/or deliberately de-emphasized. In short, the Post is all about agenda journalism. They are making a transparent canard of their supposed journalistic objectivity. One need look no further then today's Washington Post reporting on Iraq to see the formula of agenda journalism in action:

At Least 14 U.S Soldiers Die in Attacks in Iraq
U.S. Forces Continue Efforts to Oust Insurgents From Diyala Province

By John Ward Anderson and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 21, 2007; 10:06 AM

BAGHDAD, June 21 -- Fourteen U.S. soldiers have died in scattered attacks in Iraq over the last two days, including five killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in a northeastern Baghdad neighborhood, the military said in a series of statements.

With a major U.S. effort to oust insurgents underway in Diyala province north of the Iraqi capital, a series of five attacks elsewhere claimed the lives of American soldiers on patrol in Baghdad, in the restive Al Anbar province, and southwest of the capital.

Few details were released. But the military said that the deadliest attack involved a unit working with the Iraqi Security Force to "clear and control" a section of northeastern Baghdad. Along with the five U.S. soldiers who were killed, three Iraqi civilians and one Iraqi interpreter died, and one other soldier and two Iraqi civilians were injured.

In other incidents, a U.S. soldier died and three were wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their vehicle in northern Baghdad early this morning; four U.S. soldiers died yesterday when a roadside bomb detonated near a convoy in western Baghdad; two Marines were killed Wednesday during combat operations in Al Anbar province; and two other Marines died and four were injured by an explosive device near their vehicle southwest of Baghdad.

As part of a surge of some 28,500 additional troops into Iraq, U.S. forces have moved more deeply into Baghdad neighborhoods in an effort to flush out insurgents, and American officials have said that an increase in casualties was likely.

The series of attacks in the last two days occurred away from the scene of a major U.S. offensive unfolding north of Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are attempting to stamp out the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq from the city of Baqubah. . . .

Only after dwelling on the casualties does the Washington Post get to the news from the Iraq War. In all fairness to the Post, this is one of the rare articles when the Post actually fleshes out the activities of our forces in Iraq:

About 10,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are participating in the new offensive, called Arrowhead Ripper, which began early Tuesday in Diyala, a mixed Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish province north and east of Baghdad that, in recent months, has become a stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the most violent area in the country outside of the capital. Forty-one insurgents and one American soldier were killed in two days of fighting, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

"We have found three warehouses and factories where car bombs cars were built, as well as large stashes of TNT and mortar rounds used to make" roadside bombs, said Mohammed al-Askari, an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman. "We also found the swords that they used to slaughter people in their so-called courts, in addition to sniper rifles and silencers."

The U.S. military said in a statement that five weapons caches had been found and that 25 roadside bombs and five booby-trapped houses had been discovered and destroyed.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, said the military was investigating the mistaken bombing of a house in the Khatoon neighborhood of Baqubah on Wednesday. The incident occurred when soldiers decided to destroy a heavily booby-trapped residence with an aircraft bomb, but the bomb hit the wrong house, Garver said. He said it was unknown whether there were any casualties in the strike. Later, a helicopter destroyed the targeted house with a Hellfire missile, and there were large secondary explosions, Garver said.

Askari said that the offensive "has developed greatly" and that U.S.-led forces were starting a "second phase by surrounding and isolating the areas in which the terrorists are located."

The U.S. military has been sharply criticized -- particularly from within its own ranks -- for earlier offensives against al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents that allowed them to slip away and regroup in other areas. As soon as U.S. forces withdrew, the insurgents typically returned.

This time, military planners are trying to avoid that outcome by drawing a tight ring around Baqubah that locks insurgents inside, where they can be captured or killed. The challenge was illustrated Tuesday by the capture of six uninjured men who were trying to escape from Baqubah in an Iraqi ambulance, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Commanders "said we need to cordon off the city and control access in and out, which is what we did yesterday morning, and now we are very deliberately doing house-to-house clearing," said Capt. Jon Korneliussen, a U.S. military spokesman. "Many houses were wired with explosives."

. . . Sunni fighters from a variety of insurgent groups that have fought U.S. forces in the past -- including the Islamic Army and the 1920 Revolution Brigades -- were now working closely with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the offensive, helping them identify al-Qaeda in Iraq members and facilities. The fighters, operating under an umbrella group called the United Jihad Factions Council, have been issued special insignias to distinguish them from al-Qaeda in Iraq members, he said. . . .

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Liberal Bias In The Media?

Who would have thought it?
Is anyone surprised by the fact that journalists give money to liberals and the far left at a rate nine to every one journalist who gives to a republican or conservative cause:

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

Read the entire story here.

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FBI Director Says Only Matter of Time Before Terrorists Acquire Nuclear Weapons; The MSM Buries The Warning

A sizeable portion of the one billion Muslims in this world believe the United States and the West are enemies to be destroyed by any means. We know that a handful of these suicidal zealots can cause immense destruction. Thus, the nightmare scenario is that any of these terrorist organizations may gain access to nuclear weapons. And apparently, this nightmare scenario is inevitable. In remarks made yesterday before the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, FBI Director Robert Mueller made the dire warning that it was "only a matter of time and economics before terrorists will be able to purchase nuclear weapons . . .":

. . . Mr. Mueller said federal authorities, working with their counterparts overseas, must secure loose nuclear material, share intelligence about those who wish to buy and sell such material, and stop those who do -- adding that by some estimates, there is enough highly enriched uranium in global stockpiles to construct thousands of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Mueller said the economics of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere will provide nuclear material to the highest bidder, and that material will end up in the hands of terrorists. He said the al Qaeda terrorist network has demonstrated a clear intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction, noting that Osama bin Laden sought to buy uranium in Sudan in 1993.

But, he said, al Qaeda is not the only concern, adding that the United States faces threats from other terrorist cells around the world and from homegrown terrorists not affiliated with al Qaeda but who have been inspired by its message of hatred and violence.

"Several rogue nations -- and even individuals -- seek to develop nuclear capabilities," he said. "Abdul Khan, for example, was not only the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb; he peddled that technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran. Khan was one of many to prove that it is indeed a seller's market in the so-called atomic bazaar."

Mr. Mueller said the next terrorist attack is not a question of if, but when. . .

Read the entire story here. Allowing rouge regimes to develop nuclear arsenal raises exponentially the liklihood that we will see a mushroom cloud over one or more of our cities. The time to try and reduce this threat is now, before Iran is able to acquire any nuclear weapons and sets off a nuclear arms race among equally or even more dangerous regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

In light of the threat that we face, I think there is no question that this should have been front page news accross the MSM. Yet, inexplicably, this dire warning is not even mentioned in the New York Times. The Washington Post, for its part, did a lead article on Director Mueller, but it had nothing to do with the existential threat of nuclear terrorism. Instead, their lead article criticized Mueller for using an FBI jet for 36 trips over a five year period. Apparently, none in the MSM care for the message that Director Mueller has to deliver on the inevitability of future terrorist attacks, nor the inevitability of nuclear terrorism. The reason is clear - if terrorism and national security take center stage in the 2008 elections, the Democrat stand a greatly diminished chance of electoral victory. Thus, newsworthy information that should inform every voter is buried and goes unreported. I wonder if the editors and reporters of the MSM will feel that they bear any responsibility for the blood that will be spilled because of it?

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Iraqi Insanity

There is the news of Coalition operations and successes (good). Then there is the MSM reporting on Iraq comprised of a list of friendly casualties and the successes of al Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian proxies (bad). Then there is the news coming out the senate confirmation hearings for the new "czar" for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, LTG Lute (insanity).

The only places to learn what is going on in Iraq is through the military sites and milblogs. None of the information being posted by the MSM, and in particular the Washington Post or the NYT, is by any means complete. To the contrary, the Washington Post and New York Times reporting is often so one sided it could be written by al Qaeda's propoganda arm. Lest you think me partisan, do please read on.

From the DoD, here is what went on in Iraq in the past 24 plus hours:

Coalition forces today captured 32 suspected terrorists during a series of raids that targeted al Qaeda operations in Baghdad and western Iraq, officials said.

Coalition forces in central Iraq today detained 16 suspected terrorists during operations that targeted al Qaeda in Iraq leaders.

-- In three coordinated raids southeast of Fallujah, coalition forces detained 11 suspected terrorists with al Qaeda ties. Officials believed two of them are responsible for recruiting and facilitating terrorist cells in the area.

-- Coalition forces also captured a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist leader during a raid on two buildings in Hit. The individual allegedly replaced another senior leader who’d recently fled the area. Coalition forces detained three more suspected terrorists at the scene for their connection to al Qaeda senior leadership.

-- In continuing operations to disrupt the car-bomb network, coalition forces detained one suspected terrorist in Baghdad.

"Our methodical, sustained operations are making it more difficult for al Qaeda to operate, and we'll continue to apply pressure to eliminate their attacks against Iraqis and those who are working to secure the country's future," said Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, Multinational Force Iraq spokesman.

Also today in Iraq, coalition forces detained another 16 suspected terrorists during morning raids in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood. The detainees captured in Sadr City are suspected members of a clandestine terrorist cell known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training.

Four of the detainees tested positive for contact with explosives. Coalition officials cite intelligence reports indicating that one of the detainees is a key terrorist leader with ties to Iranian intelligence. This detainee is believed to be responsible for attacks on Iraqi civilians and Iraqi and coalition forces in Baghdad, officials said.

“We will seek out and find terrorists where they hide,” Garver said. “Removing the networks that bring in explosively formed penetrators is a top priority to protect the Iraqi people and the security forces that serve them.”

In operations yesterday, coalition forces operating in Baghdad killed two terrorists and detained 10 other people in raids targeting an al-Qaeda in Iraq car-bomb network.

The two men who were killed ran into a building and attempted to retrieve weapons visible inside. Coalition forces fired at the two men, killing them. Another suspected terrorist was detained on the scene, and three vehicles used to transport weapons and personnel for the terror cell were destroyed.

In five other raids conducted in Baghdad yesterday, coalition forces detained six suspected terrorists associated with the car-bomb network and destroyed two vehicles used to transport weapons and personnel for the cell. A related raid south of Tarmiyah netted three suspects tied to the terrorist group.

“Targeting the al Qaeda in Iraq (car-bomb) network is a top priority for coalition forces," Garver said. “We continue to work to reduce and eventually eliminate the ability of terrorists to attack innocent Iraqis.”

Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers accompanied by coalition advisors seized four suspected al Qaeda operatives yesterday during raids on several residences in Saqlimiyah, officials said. No coalition or Iraqi troops were hurt in the operation.

Iraqi special operations troops detained four suspected assassins believed to be coordinating and conducting killings in the Baghdad area during a June 5 operation in Baghdad. While detaining the individuals, the Iraqi troops came under enemy fire. The Iraqi forces returned fire, and the engagement ended. No Iraqi or coalition forces, who’d served as advisors, were injured during the operation.

Read the entire story from the Dod here. Also from the DOD is this report on Iraqi police:

Iraq’s police force is seeing incremental improvements across the spectrum of its mandate, and the communities it serves are benefiting as a result, an official with the U.S. police-training mission said yesterday.

Tangible gains have been made in the police force’s relationships with the Iraqi ministries of defense and justice, judicial capacity is on the rise, corruption is being pursued internally, and the training program is continuing to expand, said Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, deputy commander of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, in a conference call with online journalists and military “bloggers.”

The result is that day-to-day life in parts of Baghdad and Anbar province has improved dramatically in some cases as recruits continue to enter the police academies and enhanced police vigilance helps settle neighborhoods, Phillips said. . .

Read the entire articlehere. And here is an interesting report out of the 82nd Airborne about the building of the concrete walls in Baghdad's Adhamiyah neighborhood and its effects. Bill Rogio has an exceptional report on targeting Iranian proxies.

Now compare all of that reporting with this from today's Washington Post, "Suicide Attacks, Bombings Kill Dozens in Iraq":

Suicide attackers and car bombs struck targets in central, western and northern Iraq on Thursday, leaving at least 24 people dead and 42 wounded, Iraqi security officials said.

Gunmen also shot three professors from Islamic University in Baghdad, . . . and killed the head of the Education Ministry's department of research and development as he drove to work, police said.

"It is part of the campaign to attack every positive thing in Iraq," said an Education Ministry spokesman, Basil al-Khatib, who blamed the attacks on extremists who oppose modernity and want to drive "all elite and educated people from Iraq." He complained that the national government "is not acting" to prevent further attacks against teachers, "it only talks."

At least 211 university professors and 104 officials from the ministry have been assassinated in Iraq since the war started in March 2003, Khatib said. In addition, 91 professors have been kidnapped, and their fate is unknown, he said.

. . . On Thursday, gunmen fatally shot Sahar al-Haideri, a journalist working for the independent Aswat al-Iraqi news agency, . . . Her death followed the killings of 11 reporters and other media workers in Iraq in May, the deadliest month of the war for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders.

In another sign of the fractures in Iraqi society, gunmen stormed a barbershop in the southern port city of Basra, . . . The barber was the 18th killed in Basra this year, the official said. The profession has been targeted by both Sunni and Shiite extremists seeking to punish Iraqis who embrace Western styles and customs.

Thursday's bombings began in Rabiyah, a northern town on the border with Syria, when a suicide attacker exploded a truck bomb at the local police headquarters, killing nine people and wounding 22, according to Nineveh provincial police commander Mohammed al-Wagga.

A short time later, a car bomber attacked a joint Iraqi-U.S. military facility, killing four British security contractors, he said. An official at the British Embassy said he was unaware of the incident.

A truck bomb exploded in a suicide attack at the traffic police headquarters outside Ramadi, about 55 miles west of Baghdad, on Thursday morning, killing three policemen and injuring four, Anbar provincial police Col. Jubair Rasheed said.

In a fourth attack, a car bomb exploded around lunchtime outside a falafel restaurant in the Shiite Talibiya neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 16.

And a truck bomb explosion in Abu Ghraib, about 15 miles west of Baghdad, destroyed a Shiite mosque, damaged a Sunni one and killed two Iraqi army soldiers and an Iraqi civilian, the U.S. military reported.

. . . The U.S. military reported Thursday that an American soldier was killed and two were injured Wednesday by a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad. The death brings to 3,504 the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, . . . A British soldier was killed and three were wounded Thursday by small-arms fire northwest of Basra, . . . It was the 150th British military death in the war, according to icasualties.org.

The U.S. military also reported a major airstrike and ground attack Tuesday that killed 19 insurgents sheltered in a house near Baqubah, about 25 miles northeast of the capital. A military statement said the insurgents had fired on a U.S.-Iraqi security patrol with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, after which U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked the house with bombs, rockets and small arms. Two Iraqi army soldiers were killed in the fighting and two people, including a U.S. soldier, were injured.

Do believe me when I say that MSM reporting could well be written by al Qaeda. It is an utter travesty.

Then there was the insanity - the senate confirmation hearings for LTG Douglas Lute as war czar. Lute, an armor officer, does not support the counterinsurgency operations and seems to have a dim view of the Iraq government, all of which provided more fodder for Senate Democrats to attack the war in advance of September. It is kind of like hiring Ted Bundy to babysit your children. Just one in a long string of inexplicable acts by George Bush. And the insanity goes on . . .

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Democrats And The MSM Suffering A Failure Of Imagination

The 9-11 Commission, in assessing the failures that led to the al Qaeda attacks of 9-11, identified our most fundamental failure as being a failure to "imagine" the gravity of the threat from radical Islam and the means by which such threat might be realized. Now, but a few years removed from 9-11, the radical Islamic ideology at the core of the 9-11 attacks is still metasticizing. We are fighting that radical Islam today in Iraq - both of the Salfi al Qaeda variety and the Khomeinist Shia variety.

Democrats argue that we should leave Iraq immediately. As Hillary Clinton put it, the Iraq war is "Bush's War." The emphasis is wholly on righting what is posited as a past moral wrong. But such an argument does not address - nor are Democrats being asked to address by the MSM - the single most signficant question that we as a nation face today. It is one of imagination. What will happen to us and the world should we withdraw from Iraq in the face of the radical Islamic threat?

Our nation's premier Orientalist, the scholar Bernard Lewis, believes that a withdraw from Iraq posited by the Democrats would embolden the radical Islamists on a fundemental level, leading to "consequences--both for Islam and for America-- [that] will be deep, wide and lasting." Oliver North, looking at CIA assessments, views the effects of such a withdraw as leading to incalculable costs. And today, Dan Senor takes the Democrats to task for failure to listen to their own experts - the one's who originally argued against the war, but who now argue against leaving Iraq:

Consider Brent Scowcroft, dean of the Realist School, who openly opposed the war from the outset and was a lead skeptic of the president's democracy-building agenda. In a recent Financial Times interview, he succinctly summed up the implication of withdrawal: "The costs of staying are visible; the costs of getting out are almost never discussed. If we get out before Iraq is stable, the entire Middle East region might start to resemble Iraq today. Getting out is not a solution."

And here is retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former Centcom Commander and a vociferous critic of the what he sees as the administration's naive and one-sided policy in Iraq and the broader Middle East: "When we are in Iraq we are in many ways containing the violence. If we back off we give it more room to breathe, and it may metastasize in some way and become a regional problem. We don't have to be there at the same force level, but it is a five- to seven-year process to get any reasonable stability in Iraq."

A number of Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors also opposed the war as well as the U.S. push for liberalizing the region's authoritarian governments. Yet they now backchannel the same two priorities to Washington: Do not let Iran acquire nukes, and do not withdraw from Iraq.

A senior Gulf Cooperation Council official told me that "If America leaves Iraq, America will have to return. Soon. It will not be a clean break. It will not be a permanent goodbye. And by the time America returns, we will have all been drawn in. America will have to stabilize more than just Iraq. The warfare will have spread to other countries, governments will be overthrown. America's military is barely holding on in Iraq today. How will it stabilize 'Iraq Plus'?" (Iraq Plus is the term that some leaders in Arab capitals use to describe the region following a U.S. withdrawal.)

I heard similar warnings made repeatedly on a recent trip to almost every capital in the Persian Gulf--to some of America's closest allies and hosts of our military.

Likewise, withdrawal proponents cite career U.S. intelligence professionals as war skeptics, and not without basis. Yet here is what the U.S. intelligence community predicted in its National Intelligence Estimate early this year: "Coalition capabilities, including force levels, resources, and operations, remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq. If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this Estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq. . . .

"If such a rapid withdrawal were to take place, we judge that the Iraqi Security Forces would be unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution: neighboring countries--invited by Iraqi factions or unilaterally--might intervene openly in the conflict; massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable; al Qaida in Iraq would attempt to use parts of the country--particularly al-Anbar province--to plan increased attacks in and outside of Iraq; and spiraling violence and disarray in Iraq, along with Kurdish moves to control Kirkuk and strengthen autonomy, could prompt Turkey to launch a military incursion."

. . . John Burns of the New York Times . . . won Pulitzers for his coverage in Bosnia and Afghanistan before throwing himself full-bore into Iraq. This is how he described the stakes of withdrawal on "The Charlie Rose Show" recently:

"Friends of mine who are Iraqis--Shiite, Sunni, Kurd--all foresee a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that will absolutely dwarf what we're seeing now. It's really difficult to imagine that that would happen . . . without Iran becoming involved from the east, without the Saudis, who have already said in that situation that they would move in to help protect the Sunni minority in Iraq.

"It's difficult to see how this could go anywhere but into a much wider conflagration, with all kinds of implications for the world's flow of oil, for the state of Israel. What happens to King Abdullah in Jordan if there's complete chaos in the region? . . . It just seems to me that the consequences are endless, endless."

Earlier on the same program, Mr. Burns laid out his own version of Iraq Plus. "If you pull out now, and catastrophe ensues, then it is very likely that the United States would have to come back in circumstances which, of course, would be even less favorable, one might imagine, than the ones that now confront American troops here."

It would be one thing if only the architects of the Bush policy and their die-hard supporters opposed withdrawal. But four separate groups of knowledgeable critics--three of whom opposed going into Iraq--now describe the possible costs of withdrawal as very high.

If the Realists, neighboring Arab regimes, our intelligence community and some of the most knowledgeable reporters all say such a course could be disastrous, on what basis are the withdrawal advocates taking their position? . . .

Read the entire story here. To describe what is occurring between the Democrats and the MSM today as a failure to exercise imagination is a significant understatement. Our last "failure of imagination" led to 9-11. The stakes now are much higher. We have challenged the Islamists. If we back away now, it really is not hard to imagine the tremendous costs that will have to be paid by our country - costs that will dwarf the "blank check" needed to stablize Iraq.

And whom will the MSM and the Democrats blame then?

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MSM Preferring War Victims to War Heroes?

Thomas Sowell thinks so.

Update: Dr. Sanity takes Sowell's thoughts and runs with them.

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Brian Williams on MSM Iraq Reporting

The Williams trip was a microcosm of the journalistic dilemma in Iraq: How do you balance the constant violence with a fair assessment of whether President Bush's escalation is starting to work?

"There was a total dichotomy and disconnect between the valiant efforts of the infantry in small outposts, converting people one by one, taking out their trash, almost, and how the overall view of all that can be erased with one car bomb or one vest bomb," Williams says. "It's valid to say that tells the story of Iraq."

Read the whole story.

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WAR ON THE SURGE. And no, not the Democrats this time. This time it was the insurgents who staged a rare frontal assault on a U.S. base north of Baghdad. The insurgents attempted to breach the entrance to the base with a suicide bomber and followed up with an attack by gunmen. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and 17 injured. The base was apparently of company size -- a little more then 100 men. We do not know how many of the insurgents were killed or captured. As ominous as the attacks is the NYT take on it.

As American troops move into small combat outposts throughout Baghdad for the first time since the early months after the invasion in 2003, today’s attack underscored the inherent risks in the Bush administration’s new security strategy.

The insurgents in Iraq, of whatever stripe, have a fairly sophisticated grasp of our news media, politics, and history. It seems clear that what they desire more then anything at this time is a TET style offensive. TET was the 1968 offensive undertaken by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese regulars that doomed American involvment in Vietnam. It was a fight that we clearly won militarily, but it was played up as a huge win by the North Vietnamese in American press, leading shortly thereafter to our withdrawal from South Vietnam.

While not on TET's scale, I have no doubt that the assault that occurred today on a U.S. base was aimed directly at MSM. One of the truths of our military is that we have, in fact, because of our training, professionalism and equipment, a force far superior to anything that can be fielded by anyone else in the world today. In Iraq, we have never lost an engagement occurring at the platoon level or higher. Strip us of that mystique just once and I have no doubt that the calls for withdrawal from Democrats and a few White Flag Republicans, hand in glove with wall to wall coverage by MSM, would reach deafening levels.

Look for more attacks like these in the coming months -- and ask yourself, just how much of a disservice are Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, and their ideological companions in the MSM doing to our soldiers in the field?

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DR. SANITY LOOKS AT BDS. That is Bush Derangement Syndrome as it manifests in the MSM and far left, all as part of her salute to Bush on President's Day.

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BRITNEY SPEARS SHEARED. I mention it in passing only because it seems to be major news in the MSM. I for one did not find her new bald pate a particularly good look for her, but, to quote Sean Connery . . . "as long as the cuffs and collar match . . ."

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