NPR watch

It has been almost 6 months since the 'impossible' elections and a year since the 'doomed' turn-over of power in Iraq. So NPR, naturally, had a series of stories on how bad things are in Iraq. They never mentioned their dire and inaccurate predictions of disaster last year this time. They didn't talk about their failure to predict the 8 million Iraqis voting with their lives. They did talk about the failure of the US to halt all suicide attackers. In the most telling part, they twisted the news more than I ever remember them doing in the past. Starting with a discussion of suicide attackers, they moved, without transition, to a discussion of the Sunni dissatisfaction and loss of power. Then they outright stated that this was what was causing so many suicide attackers. However, this fails to explain why the vast, vast majority of suicide attackers we have caught or identified are foreign, not Iraqi. They also neglected to talk about the lack of Shiite retaliation against their oppressors of over 3 decades. Their perpetual hope for Iraqi societal collapse unfulfilled, they then had a commentary about how dangerous the "President's plan for unfettered democracy" was, not just in Iraq, but in the whole region and even the world.

It is interesting how much play they gave the sham Iranian elections, especially compared with the real Afghani elections. No wonder trust in the media is down…