Good Iraq News

People want to hear good news from Iraq, but they're not getting it from the major media. Some people figure there's no positive news to begin with. Others say yes there is, it just gets filtered out, while the negative news is overemphasized.

If there is encouraging news from Iraq, you'd figure it would be printed in the civilian newspapers that serve the military. These include Stars and Stripes, the Army Times, and the Air Force Times.

Last week I checked those papers every day. There wasn't a single piece of what everyone would agree is good news about progress in Iraq.

I believe there is good stuff to report— and several reasons why we don't. One is that reporters are holed up in Baghdad because it's too dangerous to travel. Another is that military briefers virtually never provide the warm, fuzzy stuff.

Individual platoons and companies and brigades may have wonderful accomplishments, as some individual emails illustrate, but most of us hear nothing.

If there is positive news, the military branches must consistently pass it along. They don't.