You seem to think that the press is trying to force everyone to look at Iraq as a failure- I don't think they are.

Continuing attacks on american troops ARE a legitimate news story.

That we can't get the lights on in Baghdad in the FIFTH month of the war, that is a legitimate story.

I think the press is being very quiet about the absence of WMD, I think this is possibly the biggest problem in Governance in our country since the Watergate issue.

However, I don't believe and I don't see that the press is trying to intentionally destroy our mission in Baghdad. I think damn near EVERY liberal (all the ones I've talked to, which is a lot of the 'east coast academic liberals' you like to malign) are praying that we stabilize Iraq and build it up and leave it a secular democracy- regardless of the fact that they opposed the war.

What I do think is that a series of very bad and very immoral political decisions have left us in a position that is VERY dire and grim in Iraq. Folks have allowed their beliefs and ideology to supercede reality and rationality.

I think that some people on the right don't want to face the screw-up here, don't want to see the danger for what it is. Instead they want to pin our situation opn "the left" and "the liberal media". In this much, there is a comparison to the vietnam era: Bad screw-ups and ideological glossing of the truth landing us in a dire situation with the failures being pinned on the media and the left.

Davin L.