No Place For The Truth

No matter what you look at the surge has been a failure. There has been no success on the political front and in spite of the spin and lies there has been no increase in security as documented in the following:

• Boy - that surge sure is working!


• And About That Successful Surge


• Say it slowly: This. Is. A. Lie


• The Mesopotamia News Wire

But the administration's PR blitz seems to be convincing many that the surge is working. Greg Sargent takes a look at why that is and concludes that yes it is because of the media. Go read the whole thing but here are the bullets:

(1) Big news orgs repeatedly twisted the words of Democrats who had returned from Iraq to make their assessments sound more positive than they were.
(2) Big news orgs shifted the definition of the success of the surge from a political goal to a military one.
(3) Many news organizations gave tons of coverage to outside experts who said the surge is working, while giving little to none to people who said it wasn't.
(4) Multiple news outlets repeatedly and falsely described the September Iraq assessment as representing the sole judgment of Petraeus, echoing White House propaganda.
(5) News orgs and pundits are now baselessly asserting that the White House is "confident" that it will "win" the September showdown with Dems over Iraq.