Out of the mainstream

The third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq brought out the usual suspects to critique the war and the president. The "MSM"-mainstream media-also came under criticism for reporting only the violence in Iraq and never the progress being made there: They seem intent on predicting civil war rather than relaying the facts as to how the country is still holding together.

Public distrust of MSM coverage of Iraq has three sources.

First, as then CNN senior news executive Eason Jordan admitted in a New York Times column published in April 2003, his network was complicit in the cover-up of Saddam's barbarism. CNN was not alone in refusing to expose the cruel despot and his mad sons-and the MSM have still not thoroughly detailed the nightmare that U.S. intervention ended.

This unreported past leads to the second criticism: the lack of context for bad news reports from Iraq. The MSM rarely report on peaceful and prospering Kurdistan and the largely stable south. Dogs that don't bite don't get stories, and Americans thus don't get the picture.

It is the third criticism that deepens dislike into contempt. Most serious observers understand Iraq as one front in a wider war. We know Musab al-Zarqawi traveled between Afghanistan and Baghdad before the invasion of Iraq, and now details of Saddam's support for terrorism across the globe are coming to light (see p. 16). But the MSM began moaning about defeat and quagmire when a sandstorm temporarily stopped the March to Baghdad three years ago, and have kept it up even as Iraq has met deadlines and three times overwhelmingly voted for freedom.

The terrorists know their only hope of victory is to demoralize the American public and force a premature withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. They play the MSM like a banjo, but many Americans know this and deeply resent it.

On the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the people of Iraq are on the path to reform and stability. The MSM, sadly, are not.