Iraq is the Media's Fault: Chapter 563

In a rather disjointed National Review article Rich Lowry tries to get the warbloggers to face reality about what's going on in Iraq but begins his plea with these unreasonable premises:

First Lady Laura Bush spoke for many conservatives when she excoriated the media’s coverage of Iraq the other day. She complained that “the drumbeat in the country from the media ... is discouraging,” and said “there are a lot of good things happening that aren’t covered.”

What are those things, one wonders? One can only imagine how Mrs. Bush can figure that they outweigh the horrors in Iraq. The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country, about 7 percent of the population. But that means that an overwhelming 93 percent haven’t left. Why doesn’t the liberal media ever report that? About 120 Iraqis are killed per day, nearly 4,000 a month. But most are still living. Couldn’t one of the morning shows do a soft feature on this heartwarming fact?

Isn't that rather like expecting your local news media to report on the latest murder and then place it in context to soothe the masses by adding that several hundred thousand people in your city were not actually murdered that day? Does that kind of thinkng make sense to anyone other than someone who believes all Bad News™ must somehow be equally balanced with Good News™? That, Mr Lowry, is not the function of the media, whether conservatives like it or not. Furthermore, any thinking person who actually knows how to do the math could figure these things out for themselves. Do you really need to be told that 100 - 7 = 93?

Lowry then goes on to cite examples of where the media were actually correct in their assumptions about the Iraq war but he then offers this ridiculous reason (which really is a prime example of how the warbloggers believe the media actually control the war and the White House) for what has happened to this point:

Partly because he felt it necessary to counteract the pessimism of the media, President Bush accentuated the positive for far too long. Bush allowed himself to be cornered by his media critics. They wanted him to admit mistakes, so for the longest time, he would admit none. They wanted him to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so for too long he kept him on. They wanted him to abandon “stay the course,” so he stuck to it. In so doing, he eroded his own credibility and delayed making the major strategic readjustment he needed to try to check the downward slide in Iraq.

Bush, you see, can be forgiven because it was the media pressure that made him do it. It's not like he's the president in charge of running the fucking country or anything. No. He made bad decisions because of the media. If that's true, he should have been fired long ago and those warbloggers who actually believe this kind of crap should have sent him packing. What kind of president makes decisions about the war based on media pressure?

Seriously, let's get real.

I don't know how Lowry managed to dig himself out of that illogical hole to actually come to what is a correct conclusion. But he did it somehow:

In their distrust of the mainstream media, their defensiveness over President Bush and the war, and their understandable urge to buck up the nation’s will, many conservatives lost touch with reality on Iraq. They thought that they were contributing to our success, but they were only helping to forestall a cold look at conditions there and the change in strategy and tactics that would be dictated by it.

Exactly. And haven't we, the evil libruls been screaming about that for years now? If you only want to pay attention to Happy Stories™, go right ahead, but don't expect the rest of us not to call you on it.

Mr Lowry's message will no doubt continue to be ignored by bloggers like the so-called 'Armed Liberal' (who thought he had big news but didn't in the end and who really stretches the definition of what a "liberal" is) at Winds of Change who are pathetically trying to cover their asses over the AP/Jamil Hussein controversy by coming up with far-reaching analogies that don't even compare to what's going on in Iraq. As commenter defib wrote there: 'if things in Iraq weren't bad, the troops would be home by now en masse and not trickling home with body parts missing.'

All Americans should be asking themselves if this is really the best use of their tax dollars - a program put into place by the most paranoid and incompetent administration ever.