Hey, good news out of Iraq from Chi Trib:
BAGHDAD — The U.S. Army has reported a sharp decrease in insurgency attacks in Baghdad.
In the week of Feb. 24 to March 2, officials said, insurgency strikes and suicide bombings dropped for the fourth consecutive week in Baghdad. They linked this to the steady increase of security patrols in the city.
Oops, scratch that. World Trib there. Chi Trib has this:
To Iraq’s Sunnis, Iran’s ascendancy as a regional power and its close relationship with the Shiite-led government represent a pernicious threat to the survival of Iraq’s Arab identity.
“America handed Iraq to Iran on a golden plate,” says Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq. “Everything Iran fought for in the Iran-Iraq war, America gave to it when it invaded.”
That’s on page one today, top left, by Liz Sly. No, it’s not the lede. This is the soft-led Trib, remember. The lede was about legislature cafeteria mumblings in “Persian” (she means Farsi?) and an Iranian charity that buys wedding dresses and arms caches seized from insurgents.
So in one story you have two characteristics of Chi Trib coverage: bad news out of Iraq and soft lede-ism.
Blithe Spirit 