the Greater Nomadic Council

More on the Amazing, Vanishing Iraq

Krugman details how the news media have started to ignore Iraq:

A funny thing happened after the United States transferred sovereignty over Iraq. On the ground, things didn't change, except for the worse.

But as Matthew Yglesias of The American Prospect puts it, the cosmetic change in regime had the effect of "Afghanizing" the media coverage of Iraq.

He's referring to the way news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off sharply after the initial military defeat of the Taliban. A nation we had gone to war to liberate and had promised to secure and rebuild - a promise largely broken - once again became a small, faraway country of which we knew nothing.

Of course, this was one of main reasons Bush wanted to hand over sovereignty so quickly in the first place. That's not to say it wasn't the right thing to do. Given the (still) growing unhappiness with the American occupation among Iraqis, it was probably wise to get them started on self-rule quickly while still attempting to keep the country relatively stable. That doesn't mean it wasn't also very politically convenient. Unfortunately, that should probably be "self-rule" since we still haven't actually given the Iraqis much in the way of real power. Regularly overruling Allawi just makes him look like a puppet and ruins what legitimacy he might have had.

Almost worse, though, is the travesty of coverage these issues receive. I wonder if we should just destroy all the mainstream news media and start over.