Foot Shooting

Here's the current current top on the Associated Press' main Iraq roundup story today (this may change as the AP does write-thrus on such stories).

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The U.S. military said Monday it plans to expand its prisons across Iraq to hold as many as 16,000 detainees, as the relentless insurgency shows no sign of letup one year after the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities.

The plans were announced on a day three U.S. Army soldiers were killed — two pilots whose helicopter crashed north of Baghdad and a soldier who was shot in the capital. At least four Iraqis died in a car bomb attack in the capital.

The AH-64 crashed in Mishahda, 20 miles north of the capital, and witness Mohammed Naji told Associated Press Television News he saw two helicopters flying toward Mishahda when "a rocket hit one of them and destroyed it completely in the air."

Even when a bit of good news has to slip in, it's assigned a big bully of a bad news claim to immediately take the wind out of it.

Dozens of foreign fighters have been reported killed in U.S.-led offensives in recent months, including Operation Spear at the porous Syrian border last week, but the deaths have had little effect on the resolve and ability of suicide bombers to strike at will.

Didn't the U.S. media used to criticize the U.S. military for an obsession with body counts during the Vietnam War? Figures which proved nothing and lacked context and only masked the true nature of the flow of the war? Well, you can never get through an AP Iraq story today without a visit from the Grim Reaper.

At least 1,740 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,334 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include five military civilians.

You'd never guess it from the AP's coverage, but U.S. military men and women gave as well as got, and in much greater measure. As the indispensible Iraq the Model put it, "It's not only us who bleed, they're bleeding too end even more profusely ...." Mohammed of ITM surveys the Iraqi press -- hardly pro-American -- and culls these victories in just the last 48 hours.

• 1st regiment/2nd commandoes brigade arrested 43 suspects in Al-Doura district while the 2nd regiment/1st brigade arrested 2 terrorists in Shu'la district.
  
  
• The interior ministry announced the beginning of operation lightning-1 in Babil province which is going to be a joint effort between the Army and the local police forces. The 1st wave of raids resulted in arresting 43 suspects and confiscating 10 vehicles used in terror attacks against Iraqi civilians and security forces.
  
  
• A force from the Iraqi army backed by Polish troops raided terrorists hides in the areas of Jibla and Rashad in the same province and arrested 8 terrorists and confiscated their Ak-47's.
  
  
• Police forces in Kerbala arrested 20 terrorists and confiscated 6 suspicious vehicles and disarmed 2 vehicle-born bombs.
  
  
• In Zangora area near Ramadi, Iraqi and American troops arrested a terror cell leader named 'Jbair Grayen Al-Jiblawi who's one of Zarqawi's aides in Anbar province.
  
  
• In the north, 3 members of the Ansar Al-Sunna army were captured in Mosul; one of the 3 terrorists carried a Saudi ID.
  
  
• In Tikrit, multinational forces arrested 3 roadside bombs-makers and in Kirkuk 10 suspects were arrested. The men are supposed to be responsible for some missile attacks in the city. Explosives' ingredients and blast capsules were found during the search of the arrest scene.
  
  
• In Abu Ghraib, Al-Muthana brigade arrested 19 terrorists and found amounts of weapons and detonation devices as well as vehicles that were prepared for performing terror attacks.
  
  
• In Al-Kasra neighborhood in Baghdad, IP men and American explosives experts failed an attack with a car bomb that was parked in the heavily crowded main commercial street in the district.
  
  ...
  
  
• In Tal-afar near Mosul, Iraqi and American troops killed 15 terrorists in clashes that took place yesterday.
  
  
• Police patrols in Dibis town arrested two terrorists while they were trying to plant a roadside bomb on the main street in the town.
  
  
• One of the most important successes was arresting one of Izzat Al-Douri's relatives along with 3 of his bodyguards.
  
  
• Iraqi TV announced Khalid Sulaiman Darwis (aka Abu Al-Ghadia Al-Soori) was killed during a raid as part of Operation Spear in Anbar province. The Syrian terrorist is one of the leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

And so forth, not one of which made the AP round-up. Instead, that story builds up "relentlessly" to this grand finale:

There have been positive developments in the year since the June 28, 2004 handover, the most notable being the election of the 275-member National Assembly on Jan. 30, Iraq's first free vote in a half-century. The assembly appointed the rest of the government the following month.

Smaller gains have been made as well.

The number of telephone and Internet subscribers has increased nearly threefold, according to the Washington-based Brookings Institution, and the number of trained Iraqi judges has doubled.

However, the insurgency — estimated at about 16,000 Iraqi militants and foreign fighters — has drastically overshadowed the improvements and created havoc around the country. The situation has forced the implementation of a daily 11 p.m. curfew in Baghdad.

Car bombings have become one of the most devastating methods used by the insurgency. There have been more than 484 since the handover, killing at least 2,221 people and wounding more than 5,574, according to an AP count.

Unemployment remained high at 27-40 percent in May compared with 30-40 percent in June 2004. About $5 billion of U.S. money still remains from the $18.4 billion reconstruction package approved in 2003, according to the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee.

I can honestly say that, as someone who's been reading this coverage since 2002, the tone of this is as dire and hopeless as anything the AP yet has done.

I honestly don't know what justified the wire service suddenly loosing the dogs of defeat on the American people, unless it be the recent polls that show, finally, a tip of majority American popular opinion against the whole idea of the war. Never mind that the poll also shows only about 1 in 8 Americans is saying "bring them home now."

If I were a complete cynic about my profession, and I were writing a news story about this news story, it would begin like this:

Emboldened by new poll results that show public opinion in America turning against the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq War, AP reporters and editors today renewed their assault on the American perception of its military effort, attacking on several fronts against known vulnerable spots in the public's mind.

Trouble is, there's more than one poll out there, and the media's victory in turning America against the war may be Pyrrhic.

The latest Pew numbers show just 42% of Americans say news organizations generally "stand up for America;" about as many (40%) believe that news organizations are "too critical of America." That represents a significant shift since July 2003, when a narrow majority (51%) said that news organizations stand up for America, while 33% said they were too critical. The percentage who say news organizations are too critical is only slightly below the level during Clinton's impeachment trial.

And there are specific bad numbers for the media in its military coverage.

Beyond the rising criticism of press performance and patriotism, there also has been significant erosion in support for the news media's watchdog role over the military. Nearly half (47%) say that by criticizing the military, news organizations are weakening the nation's defenses; 44% say such criticism keeps the nation militarily prepared. The percentage saying press criticism weakens American defenses has been increasing in recent years and now stands at its highest point in surveys dating to 1985.

As I read the graph accompanying the report, this is the first time more Americans are saying the media weakens the nation with its military coverage than are saying the media strengthens it with the way it writes about the military.

And the report itself makes it clear that this is not a public call for all good news all the time, or propaganda.

While the press is taking more heat for its patriotism and performance, the public continues to decisively reject a shift to 'pro-American' coverage of the war on terror. By nearly three-to-one (68%-24%), Americans believe it is better if coverage of the war on terror is neutral rather than pro-American.

The preference for neutral coverage of the war on terror is shared by majorities across the demographic and political spectrum. However, about four-in-ten conservative Republicans (39%) favor pro-American coverage, the largest percentage in any category.

America's military men and women can and, I believe, will prevail in Iraq. But America's journalistic men and women may already have lost their own battle.