Neither

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com I’ve been quite critical of the Washington Post’s coverage of the fighting in Basra and related skirmishing. As is often the case, though, the Post’s editorial page succeeds where its news pages fail. In fact, this editorial about Basra is not only unobjectionable, it actually assists me in trying to evaluate what the fighting meant and where things stand now that it has subsided. The editors begin by rejecting the ultra-negative view propagated in much of the MSM, including the Post itself: Those who portray every development in Iraq as negative described the fighting as proof of worsening sectarianism or as a negation of the improved security achieved in the past six months. In fact, it was neither. In short, the results were mixed. But “the fact that an Iraqi government commonly described as impotent and inert now is willing and able to fight Shiite militias is a step in the right direction."