Ignorance Is Bliss

As I expected, the traditional media has simply ignored GOP Rep. Jim Walsh, who has changed his view on Iraq and backed withdrawal. Contrast it with Brian Baird, everybody's new favorite Democrat who has become a media staple because he now supports a continued military presence in the country.

Other things the media has conveniently forgotten: claims that the surge would bring stability to Iraq, the fact that the benchmarks were written by the Iraqi government and the Congress, not the White House, the knowledge that the surge was always going to end next spring because there aren't any troops available to continue it, and the continual proof that an Iraqi oil law is always two days away from being a "done deal."

BAGHDAD, Sept. 12 — A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government here.

Senior Iraqi negotiators met in Baghdad on Wednesday in an attempt to salvage the original compromise, two participants said. But the meeting came against the backdrop of a public series of increasingly strident disagreements over the draft law that had broken out in recent days between Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, and officials of the provincial government in the Kurdish north, where some of the nation’s largest fields are located.

The White House relies on people's short-term memories. Those running the traditional media are among the most reliable.