Lazy Gopher Pachyderm

NBC led their newscast Friday night with a story titled “Frank Assessment.” Brian Williams led into the report saying it was “…a difficult message tonight for a lot of Americans to hear at this juncture in the war…”

Reporter Jim Miklaszewski narrated the segment about the violence:

“It was an unusually tough and candid assessment from a top U.S. military Commander in Iraq when he told reporters that he just doesn’t have enough troops to get control over increasing violence in Diyala province north of Baghdad.”

This is really bad news they’re telling here. Non-stop violence has led to the troop surge. But the surge is simply met with more violence. No matter what is done, all that happens is violence, violence, violence. Brian is right; it’s hard to hear this….that Harry Reid was right…the war is lost. This last chance was it. After this new strategy it’s all over.

The story goes on…

“Ironically, the recent surge into Baghdad drove insurgents and terrorist out of the capital and into Diyala province…”

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Time out!

What was that? That little ditty they tried to slip by? The surge is forcing terrorists and insurgents out of Baghdad? They’re on the run?!? That’s GREAT news! Hey! The surge is working! So why the long faces at NBC? Unless…

Unless…good news in Iraq is BAD news in NBC’s view. I mean…maybe things ARE getting bad in Iraq, as in it’s more difficult for NBC to paint a losing picture, perhaps? Just look at the very carefully, closely cropped sentence fragments of General Mixon’s comments to the media that are shown in the story. I would dearly love to see them broadcast Mixon’s full content.

But then I guess it would be harder to focus on the real story, that the Bush/Petraeus strategy is working. Because Brian Williams is right. That would be “a difficult message tonight for a lot of Americans to hear at this juncture in the war.”

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, all the Democrat presidential hopefulls...