Shooting The Messenger

Iraq continues to spiral out of control. Andrew Sullivan has a good summary of the failures of their government, stating that "On the brink of civil war, they still cannot concede the slightest thing to the other side.... The news - especially about the infiltration of the police forces by Shiite militias - continues to be dreadful." There is also a commentary making the rounds by Gen. William Odom about seeing Iraq through the prism of Vietnam.

Still the far-right, Bush's ever-loyal base, refuses to acknowledge any problems.

The right-wing has huddled together and come up with a new talking point... It's all the media's fault. You see, everything in Iraq is actually going fantastically!! Hey, if Peter Pace and Ralph Peters say so, it must be true! But the media lies and says that the country is devolving into civil war. Because they're evil and hate America. Soon the public will see the Awesomeness that is Iraq and the media will be ashamed of themselves. Everything that's gone "wrong" was the fault of reporters who, apparently, run the Pentagon.

Molly Ivins smacks down this nonsense with great passion-

Despite Rumsfeld’s rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we’re best likely to come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate information are somehow disloyal or connected to al-Qaida?

Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq, Rumsfeld or the media. And the score is: Press—1,095, Rumsfeld—zero.

What she said.