BlackFive

The Iraqis are taking over Anbar Province within 10 days!

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US military is to hand over security control of the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Anbar province to Iraqi forces in the next 10 days, a US military spokesman announced on Monday.

"The handover of Anbar is expected to take place in the next 10 days," Lieutenant David Russell told AFP, declining to provide an exact date.

This could be the biggest news from Iraq since the terror attack on the al-Askari Mosque but I doubt you will see it on the news tonight.

Now contrast that with this story from one year ago this week:

by Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst, June 20, 2007

These grim developments unfortunately confirm a series of predictions we made when in these columns after the "surge" strategy was unveiled with much optimism and fanfare five months ago.  On Jan. 19, we predicted of the "surge" strategy, "Its success seems unlikely."

Even then, as we noted, there were solid reasons to fear that the "surge" strategy was too little, too late and that it ignored core realities of the strategic dilemmas in Iraq.  We noted that the "surge" had been muched hyped, but that it remained exceptionally underpowered.

In Mr. Sieff's defense, his opinion at the time was being parroted by every network and major newspaper.  Sieff's bold predictions and Harry Reid's dream of a "lost war" seemed possible and undermining the morale of the troops and the will of the US populice could only help.  But while Reid, Pelosi, Murtha and their chorus of surrender monkeys were gleefully commenting on another "grim milestone", something was happening on the ground; something profound.

I am 100% sure that Mr. Sieff will pen an article as fast as humanly possible hailing the success and thanking God that his fears "fears" were unfounded.

Chirp, chirp (crickets).

He is not alone.  The media coverage trendline correlates directly with the number of dead US servicemen and women.  This is sad but even the New York Times admits it:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year."  Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007.  The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51 versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News."  (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

This is not because nothing is happening in Iraq; believe me, plenty is happening.  This is because their prediction (if not their hope) is not materializing.  It's almost as if they have a collective "If we ignore it, it will go away" mentality.

To use a sports anaolgy, here's a headline from today:

Teixeira's 3 HRs power Braves past Mariners

Notice that it didn't but could have easily read:

Seattle Pitching Sucks, Again

Now if the second headline were used in a Seattle paper by a local reporter lamenting the ineffectiveness of the hometown team's pitching, it would be perfectly understandable.

The mainstream media has chosen to ignore any progress in Iraq but how far are we away from this headline?

Sunni Collaborators Undermine Gallant Insurgent Struggle