Success in Iraq: A Media Blackout - is a piece by Ralph Peters at the New York Post. As he and others have mentioned on numerous occasions, our success in Iraq isn’t something the media want to cover; it’s the failures that are given front page headlines.

May 20, 2008 — DO we still have troops in Iraq? Is there still a conflict over there? If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days. As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines. Want a real “inconvenient truth?” Progress in Iraq is powerful and accelerating.

Raise the flag and cheer “hurrah!” Where are the ticker tape parades? WE ARE WINNING!!!! Wouldn’t you love to see at least one headline that proudly trumpets that news from the hilltops?

To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:

* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into “Abu Ghraib, The Sequel.” Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The “atrocity” didn’t get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.

* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who’d turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.

* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.

* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.

Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There’s peace in the streets.

And so he hides in Iran as his minions lose. Peace in the streets is only a tragedy for those cheering the terrorists on. But for regular Americans, this is a major victory and *wowsers*, we should be spreading the good news around in every which way we can, and putting it on the MSM’s blogs and in the comments sections on their articles. And we should especially find time to thank our veterans with Memorial Day approaching.

Today, Iraqi soldiers, not militia thugs, patrol the lanes of Sadr City, where waste has replaced roadside bombs as the greatest danger to careless footsteps. US advisers and troops support the effort, but Iraq’s government has taken another giant step forward in establishing law and order.

There goes the notion that the IVAW likes to spread around - that Americans are killing innocent Iraqis; Iraqis themselves are standing up and defending their streets. With the Anbar Awakening that was such a disappointment to Bin Laden he was compelled to reference it in one of his speeches, it is not surprising that Iraqis have stood up. This is one of the reasons I’m so proud of the work of Pat Dollard who spent months in Iraq documenting the ‘other side’ of what Michael Moore depicted in his Fahrenheit 9/11 film.

My fellow Americans, have you read or seen a single interview with any of the millions of Iraqis in Sadr City or Basra who are thrilled that the gangster militias are gone from their neighborhoods?

No, sadly, no. But wouldn’t that be something if they started to realize this bias is the very reason they’re not selling papers and people are turning away from the MSM? Or…is our defeat so important to them that they will continue singing the terrorists’ praises to fewer and fewer readers/listeners/viewers?

this article will be appearing tomorrow at the Talon.