THE SCRAPBOOK may have nattered on too much recently about the media's negative coverage of the Iraq war. So we're outsourcing this week's complaining to Slate's inimitable Mickey Kaus.

Notes Kaus: "U.S. military deaths in Iraq have apparently declined by about 20% since the 'surge' began. It would be a caricature of [mainstream media] behavior if the New York Times, instead of simply reporting this potentially good news, first constructed some bad news to swaddle it in, right? From [the March 16] Times:

The heightened American street presence may already have contributed to an increase in the percentage of American deaths that occur in Baghdad.

Over all, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq from hostilities since Feb. 14, the start of the new Baghdad security plan, fell to 66, from 87 in the previous four weeks.

But with more soldiers in the capital on patrol and in the neighborhood garrisons, a higher proportion of the American deaths have occurred in Baghdad--36 percent after Feb. 14 compared with 24 percent in the previous four weeks. Also over the past four weeks, a higher proportion of military deaths from roadside bombs have occurred in Baghdad--45 percent compared with 39 percent.

"Soldiers," Kaus points out, "presumably get attacked where they are, not where they aren't. If we deploy more soldiers in Baghdad more soldiers will presumably be attacked, and killed, in Baghdad. I don't see why that in itself is bad news, or even news news, if

Ted Koppel Is Making Sense

The former Nightline host is interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, March 11:

KOPPEL: "I made a little note here of something that [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad said to you a moment ago. He said the region will not be stable until Iraq is stabilized. It's the one thing nobody talks about. Everyone is concerned about the United States being in the middle of a civil war inside Iraq, but they forget about the fact that, if U.S. troops were to pull out of Iraq, that civil war could become a regional war between the Sunnis and Shia. And the region, just in case anyone has forgotten, is the Persian Gulf, where we get most of our oil and, you and I have talked about this before, natural gas. So the idea of pulling out of there and letting the region--I mean, letting the national civil war expand into a regional civil war, is something the United States cannot allow to happen. . . .

"If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on and has been going on for the past 24 years. We just didn't connect the dots. Twenty-four years ago, the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That was 1983, 241 Americans killed. In the interim, between then and now, you had two attacks on the World Trade Center, you had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, you had the attempt to blow up the U.S.S. Cole, you had the bombing of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. This war's already been going on for 24 years. We were just a little bit slow to recognize it."

Obama Messiah Watch

"On the question of inner-city poverty and dysfunction, Obama proposes a suite of orthodox solutions--early childhood education, after-school and mentoring programs, efforts to teach young parents how to be parents. But he also emphasizes personal responsibility: 'The framework that tends to be set up in Washington--which is either the problem is not enough money and not enough government programs, or the problem is a culture of poverty and not enough emphasis on traditional values--presents a false choice.'

"That's the way Obama talks, by the way, in sinuous but precise sentences that practically diagram themselves as they go along."

--Eugene Robinson,
Washington Post, March 13, 2007