Iraq: Almost There

Iraq’s elected parliament approved the country’s new cabinet, a historic milestone toward building democracy in the Arab world. Cabinet installation follows the earlier agreement, nearly a month ago, on Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister. The mainstream media (MSM), which virtually ignored the earlier event, covered the cabinet announcement, while uniformly focusing on the problems that still face Iraq and pointing out, correctly, that al-Maliki has yet to name permanent interior and defense ministers, the key cabinet appointments.

The pattern in politics is first, try to ignore the opposition, and then, if that doesn’t work, attack. The MSM first tried to ignore the progress coming out of Iraq, and when that could no longer be avoided, it went on the attack. Here is an example from Chicago Tribune reporter Liz Sly:

Four governments have come and gone since the fall of Saddam Hussein, starting with the U.S. administration of Paul Bremer. Each one arrived with promises of a better future. Each left the country in a state of worse violence than the one before, with a more ragged infrastructure, more deeply entrenched corruption and fewer hours of electricity each day.

Sly’s “fact”, as opposed to her opinions about violence, infrastructure, and corruption, is the drop in electricity production as each new government came on board. Here, the true facts are readily available by checking the Brookings’ Iraq Index (p. 31) for Iraq’s daily hours of electricity in the month when each administration began:

Bremer (6/03): N/A
Al-Allawi (6/04): 10 hours
Al-Jaafari (5/05): 8 hours
Al-Maliki (4/06): 11 hours

Score another point for MSM opinion trumping the facts.