Here’s a headline from today’s Financial Times: Iraq fades as hot political issue.
I think this is terrible political judgment from their Washington bureau chief, Edward Luce. He’s swallowed the Bush administration’s spin that Iraq is now under control thanks to general Petraeus and the surge, and that the crucial new frontline of foreign trouble is Iran.
I think that’s way off the mark. Consider yesterday’s front page of The New York Times. Three stories across the front page: the Blackwater mess, potential disaster between Turkey and the Kurdish region of Iraq and the mistrial in the Dallas terrorism financing case. Not much sign of Iraq fading there. (Of course, the Times has its own bizarre misjudgments. Huffington Post pointed out the glaring absence of anything other than the most minor play for the wildfires in southern California from that front page.)