Looks like we’re looking to downscale our troop involvement in Iraq.

Then again, maybe not. Wars and rumors of wars, right? Press coverage of the war on terrorism has rarely seemed to be on the mark to me. Reporters seem to want to blame that on bad communication. I blame it at least as much on their propensity to want to print the story they want. Bad numbers, embarrassments and atrocities, horror and failure — yep, that would be the story. Anything besides that — pointless diversion. Or even an intentional redirect tactic by an embattled White House.

Occasionally, that may even be the story. But the press seems like a clock that’s stuck on one time — they’ll be right at least twice a day, but it doesn’t mean they’re not broken.

I much prefer those few avenues that give information and analyze the patterns that are occurring without trying to jump to a lot of conclusions, and that only seems available in the alternative media. For instance, I thought this article (via Strategy Page) was interesting:

The bloodshed in Iraq is getting worse, and involving U.S. troops less and less….The terrorists rarely get a shot at American troops any more. But Iraqi civilians are another matter, and the usual target these days are people who can’t defend themselves. The government is trying to rein in the death squads formed within the police (for the most part) and army (much more rare). But this is hard. The government has not been able to shut down the Sunni Arab terrorists and criminal gangs either. People don’t feel safe, especially in mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods and villages. The terrorists also abuse Sunnis Arabs who do not support the killers.

And by the way, the largely unasked question is, are we winning or losing the war? No one wants to put it in those terms, because it sounds like it reduces the whole thing to the status of a football game. But it’s another of those ugly truths about wars: someone wins, someone loses. The ones that look like stalemates just mean that the whole thing will happen again until they come to a decisive conclusion (think WWI and WWII, or Gulf War and Iraq War). As horrible as it is to contemplate — and really, what about war isn’t horrible to contemplate? — both sides are better off if it doesn’t end in some sort of tie.

Not that that would be much of a possibility with Muslims on one side. But if we’re supposed to take our casualty numbers and the continuation of insurgent action as signs of failure, it looks like al-Zarqawi didn’t get the memo:

As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance …

That’s what he wrote in a letter found in his flattened hide-out. Whole story is here. And as for why that story is so underreported … as I said, I don’t think much of the legacy media these days.