We’ve said it many times, but the news agencies are the most pervasive sources of liberal bias in the American media. The Associated Press is very bad; this article by Pauline Jelinek, titled “U.S. Response in Iraq May Inspire Enemies,” illustrates the point.
Jelinek is a lefty AP reporter who specializes in gloom and doom stories about Iraq and other fronts in the war on terror. Today’s piece begins:
With each new battle in Iraq, two things are tallied: The enemy killed and the enemy created. That observation by retired CIA operations officer Milt Bearden highlights one of the U.S. military’s worst dilemmas: as it fights street by street to crush an insurgency, it is causing resentment among the very Iraqis whose hearts and minds it hopes to win.
That, of course, is a fair enough point, and one that our military keeps constantly in mind. But Jelinek takes the point beyond any balance or sense of perspective:
No coalition effort in Iraq has been so prominent a failure as that aimed at winning “the battle for hearts, minds and perceptions.”
Iraqis complain about persistently high unemployment, which fuels discontent among young men, making them more inclined to join the insurgency. Fuel shortages and widespread charges of corruption also have steadily eaten into goodwill, as has tension among factions fearing they won’t get a fair share of power when the new government is formed.
Indeed, while recent surveys show a majority of Iraqis think life is better than a year ago, the majority still oppose having foreign forces on their soil
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