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The problem is that where and when things are going well it's not so 'sexy' for the media to report that.
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Quite. But since we're talking about the two most media-savvy and manipulative Governments on the planet, don't you think they could get the truth out, if the truth was that the country was 'getting back on its feet'? What is this great unspoken truth that illustrates how the country is 'getting back on its feet'?
Instead we have got what turn out to be a succession of lies ('we're going in to disarm Saddam of his WMDs','the insurgency is a small number of ex-regime elements','the insurgency will stop when we capture Saddam','We're going in to stop terrorism','things will get better after the election','things will get better after the constitution is ratified','100,000 police have been trained','We have no differences with the Iraqi Government'). Given that history, anything coming out of Washington and London needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.
You can't argue with the graph of US deaths, which has steepened over time (despite the greater security around US forces), indicating that the country is getting progressively more violent.
Who are, er, part of the media. Bias can swing both ways (ask Fox News). And if capturing insurgents is what you celebrate two and a half years after the invasion (while ignoring the body count back in Baghdad), that's really rather indicative of how low expectations now are ('beacon of democracy' hopes replaced by 'hope the civil war isn't too bad after we pull out and that Iran isn't running too much of the country').
An Iraqi film maker writes in the Grauniad today:
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You cannot go immediately because the country will collapse - and it is you, after all, who brought the chaos. You destroyed Saddam, but you also destroyed a system that had worked for 50 years. You didn't just take Saddam, you took the whole order: the police force, the way the police worked, the way security was kept and managed.
Withdrawal right now will mean the complete collapse of our society; if the British and US forces stay, the collapse will just be more gradual. I don't want to be too pessimistic - I've thought about this for a long time - but I can't see the answer. I've been all over Iraq in the past year, and been asked by many, many people what the best solution is. I don't know
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...575416,00.html