Many conservatives, including this week’s Patrick McIlheran column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, are back to practicing what they do best: denying reality. As they’ve done throughout the Iraq war, we’ve seen conservatives repeat something over and over enough times, and pretty soon they start to believe it themselves.
This week Patrick McIlheran is following the nationwide trend of conservatives declaring the “surge” in Iraq a success.
It could be that more bodies, bound and shot, will start turning up in Baghdad again. For now, there’s been a sharp fall in this form of Iraqi violence, say that country’s officials – about 75% fewer bodies found a week compared with December.
This on a day that the US military reports that at least another 6 troops have been killed. But at least Patrick is keeping tabs on the weekly violence rates for us. I’m sure the families of those families will be happy to know that the number of civilian deaths is down compared to a few weeks in December.
While the weekly reports from conservative columnists like Patrick McIlheran are all too eager to report on a week of “good news” from Iraq, I wonder if they’ll continue their newfound desire to report on Iraq civilian deaths if and when they return to the terrible levels they’ve been at for the last few years.
Because the “reality” of the death and destruction in Iraq continues even when they choose not to acknowledge it.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
