Blogoland

I am going to agree with Glenn Reynolds that the New York Times's reportage on graffiti-scrawled walls in Basra has been woefully insufficient. It's like they want us to lose the war for vandalism! "Funny how you get this kind of thing in the London Times but not the New York Times," the professor writes while pointing to an article penned by the British commander of multinational forces in Basra -- plainly a man without any perceptible agenda.

Indeed, Google proves Reynolds' point by divulging this two-month old NYT article detailing what's going on in Basra with the typical negative-nelly headline "Drive in Basra by Iraqi Army Makes Gains" coupled with a video essay entitled "A Surge Transforms Basra." It must really be discouraging for bloggers like Reynolds to see all this horrible good news being hidden on the front page of the NYT:

BASRA, Iraq — Three hundred miles south of Baghdad, the oil-saturated city of Basra has been transformed by its own surge, now seven weeks old.

In a rare success, forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants who only a month ago shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias.

Scandalous! So listen up MSM: when the London Times runs pieces by the commander of multinational forces in Basra telling us about all the good news in Basra, and more than two months after the NYT runs pretty much the same news, we should all just chalk it up to the abject anti-victory bias of the NYT.