Independent correspondent Michael Yon is warning us. “The disconnect” between what’s happening in Iraq and what’s in the newspapers etc. is stunning:
It is clear that Iraq is turning a corner. Not only are Sunni and Shia talking here in Baghdad, but the fighting definitely is abating. I’ll be out in Sunni and Shia neighborhoods all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Petraeus’ ideas are starting to work.
I’ve been watching for days as LTC Patrick Frank pulls neighborhoods together here in the Rashid district of Baghdad. We’ve been swamped going to reconciliation meetings. ( Spent hours in meetings today. ) LTC Frank is one of many battalion commanders I have seen who are winning in their zones. A Washington Post writer was here for several days and his observations were similar.
He expands on this here, not in the clearest prose around, but cogent enough:
I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
Blithe Spirit 