The media: They're not with us

Now we know why so many journalists were hot under the collar when President Bush declared: "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

It's increasingly clear that a sizable number of "journalists" in the old-line liberal news media aren't with us.

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No matter what, they seem to keep hoping for failure in Iraq, having given up that the success in Afghanistan will end. With each success in Iraq, they offer the lament that failure will surely be around the corner. Do they hate the Bush administration so much that they wish to see Americans lose in the war against terrorism? Or do they just hate their own country that much?

Ever since the main combat operations began, the media has been cheering on the insurgency. They spent weeks preparing for the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq to reach 1,000. Now, they're busy blowing up the balloons and hanging the party streamers for when the count reaches 2,000.

Perhaps they can use the appetizers leftover from the "10,000 Dead From Hurricane Because of Republican Policies" party in September. The crowd left that party early when it became clear that despite their hype, the loss of life in New Orleans was more than 90 percent less than they had breathlessly predicted.

Fortunately for Americans, things in Iraq just won't go badly enough no matter how much the press wishes otherwise.

First, they insisted the Jan. 30, 2005, elections could not take place. They championed U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan's skepticism and criticisms of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and his dire predictions of failure for the Americans.

The media – along with Kofi and his crooked partners at the U.N. – ended up with egg on their faces. Millions of Iraqis gave the "Coalition Hoping for Failure in Iraq" the purple middle finger to show them just how wrong they were.

Undeterred, the media insisted that the electoral success would never be repeated. But, of course, that's exactly what happened this past weekend when millions of Iraqis again went to the polls and defied the conventional wisdom of the liberal journalist brain trust.

This time, the old-line media had a caveat: Even if the elections do take place with relative peace and order, it still wouldn't matter because the Sunnis would vote overwhelmingly against the draft constitution on the ballot.

Initial election results indicate that voters actually approved the constitution in at least 50 percent of the Sunni-dominated provinces. So, now the media is insisting the election was rigged – just like Florida. The left really can't stand losing at the polls.

The media cannot allow for the possibility that things are going better than they report in Iraq, because they're stuck on the record declaring the situation there to be a complete failure.

A little more than one week before the election in Iraq, a California newspaper began an editorial on the elections with the enthusiastic refrain of, "As if things weren't already bad enough in Iraq …"

One of the gray ladies of the liberal media establishment, the New York Times, ran stories hyping up the violence of the day and the poor turnout. This was despite the fact that the elections were remarkably peaceful and turnout was high.

Writing under the headline "Turnout is Mixed as Iraqis Cast Vote on Constitution," Times reporters cried with sadness at the failure to defeat the constitution:

"But the Sunni turnout – high in some cities like Mosul, low in others like Ramadi – appeared to be insufficient to defeat the new charter. …"

Interesting way to put it, don't you think?

I guess they just took the language from their 2004 election coverage, which easily could have read:

"But the turnout of liberal voters – high in some cities like New York and San Francisco, low in others like Indianapolis and Nashville – appeared to be insufficient to defeat George Bush. …"

Well, don't be too sad, liberal journalists. In just a few days time the focus will shift to the trial of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. This will provide the media ample opportunities to rewrite history and tell us all how Hussein wasn't really that bad of a guy after all.

In the war against terrorism, the old-line liberal media has dedicated plenty of column inches telling us how President Bush has done everything wrong in Iraq.

With Saddam's trial approaching, it'd be nice if the liberal journalists could take just one or two week's of vacation from the Bush-bashing and America-bashing and realize that in the war on terrorism, it's intellectually and morally dishonest to be "against us" and defending the "other side."