Howard Kurtz has an interesting piece about the meta-issue of the war coverage sub-text that the war is going badly. As I noted before, the press has jumped on problems with Fedayeen Saddam as evidence that the war is bogging down, then when that looks silly, it wants to blame the administration for raising expectations.


We news consumers are left wondering. I never felt that my expectations were raised or lowered, because it's all suspense anyhow. We mostly worry about our troops and the dangers of WMD amid the fog of war, and the fog of spin isn't really helping much.

I don't know whether we have too few troops in Iraq, but I'm definitely getting the impression that we've got too many correspondents there, especially at Centcom. It would be less annoying if they networks and print media just got press releases instead of jousting with the generals day after day, trying to find a story behind the story.