Bill Safire’s all purpose phrase is the spiritual foundation of this editorial from Arthur Chrenkoff in the Wall Street Journal’s online Opinion Journal.
As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby writes, “The press tends to emphasize what’s going wrong in Iraq because of an inbuilt bias for the negative–only the plane that crashes, not the 999 that land safely, [makes] news. The result is that while the bad news in Iraq gets reported everywhere, the reports of good news you have to look for.” For the sake of fairness, one might add that in Iraq it’s perhaps 10 or 20 planes that crash, yet even with that caveat the mainstream media coverage often give one the impression that the whole Iraqi air fleet has gone down in flames.The past two weeks have not been an exception, with the news from Iraq dominated by more hostage crises, the oil shock, continuing terrorist campaign and a sequel to the Shia uprising. Good news, once again, was few and far between. Yet progress continues to be made on the ground in Iraq, even during the most dangerous of times and often against the odds that we–so insulated by the safety, comfort and predictability of life in the West–can hardly even begin to comprehend.
The piece came out on August 16, so it misses the outcome on Najaf and the halving of Iraq’s oil exports due to a flurry of pipeline attacks conducted on Wednesday. The gist of Chrenkoff’s good news is that some Iraqis are touring the US soaking up local governing tutorials, the Iraqi insurance industry is blooming — gotta be a lot of fine print in those policies — and the Iraqi elections are getting closer (never mind they’re shaping up to be the flaming asteroid that vaporizes the camel).
It’s good to recognize that Iraq is not the scene of unalloyed bad news, but it’s a bit pathetic to take shelter in the shadow of a burgeoning insurance industry in a country where most things must be pretty much uninsurable. It’s cute, though, that the Journal is focusing on the financial sector and activities related to the (illegal) privatization fiats imposed by Paul Bremer.
I found the link to the Journal op-ed through the website of The Committee for the Present Danger, the anti-whatever group whose fierce collective intellect seems entirely dedicated at the moment to linking with commentary from right-wing editorial pages. Oh, and an unnamed future member of the Committe, once he’s out of jail, is under investigation for passing US secrets to Israel.
Fittingly, the suspected culprit works from serial fantasist Doug Feith’s Pentagon office. From the parameters mentioned in the Knight-Ridder piece, a folow-on in the NY Times and a third piece from MSNBC appears to narrow the chase down to one man, Harold Rhode, who is Feith’s Middle East specialist.
Feith, from whom all blessings flow …
UPDATE: Apparently I picked the wrong man of the two suggested by the Times and MSNBC pieces. According to Warren Strobel at Knight-Ridder, whose work I’ll accept over just about anyone else’s, the main immediate focus of the investigation is Larry Franklin, the other guy mention in tandem with Rhode. Strobel also says the investigation appears to extend way beyond Franklin. Here’s hoping …
