or is it perhaps agenda journalism? Perhaps things aren't as bad there as we're being led to believe. Here's the link.

A typical piece of reporting on the "destruction" in Baghdad came from the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran on April 22, which repeated all the usual gossip about the ministry of oil and then quoted Saad Jawad, a professor of political science at Baghdad University: "The Iraqis had very high hopes for the Americans," Jawad told him. "But all this euphoria about change, all this relief, went away when they saw the amount of destruction to the infrastructure of the country and the carelessness of the Americans to the Iraqis' day-to-day lives." Yes, euphoria is bound to dissipate, but there's no sign it has yet. More important, what infrastructure destruction? The reporter lets the charge stand undisputed but must be aware that roads, bridges, power stations, and rails lines were all left unbombed and intact by U.S. forces. The exception was power substations that fed key government buildings and broadcasting facilities (unless you count army bases and secret police headquarters as "infrastructure").



But my favorite mad media moment was when an AP journalist turned up in a car heading to the Ministry of Information, the top floor of which was on fire. "Why aren't you putting out the fire?" she angrily demanded of Sgt. William Moore. He looked at her with astonishment and asked, "How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Turning away, he muttered, "Piss on it?"

It is true that the military has been slow in some respects to make the transition to an occupation role. And the senior brass here and at CENTCOM have a lot of explaining to do about their planning for postwar operations--the Army arrived here with virtually no Arabic speakers and even after two weeks there were only a handful. But as Gen. Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division pointed out the same day as the Ministry of Information fire, "It's only a week since we were in combat here," and the media have bizarrely high expectations about how quickly a conquered city should return to normal.