You lost me with "Liberal Middle East expert John Cole".   I consider him no more than a clown act any more, not an expert.  He has not made a cogent argument in years.  I like to read all points of view to an issue, even where I disagree with them - but I won’t waste my time on nonsense. 

"So, why is violence down? The answer is, of course, reconciliation."

Not necessarilly. It could be because the US Army has erected walls everywhere and has turned privates into bouncers for these gated communities. Finger, dike, the sea level behind the dike isn’t going down. No, I am not swayed. If the Iraqis are saying anything it is that they might as well not have the troops there anyway. So I dunno - all I know is that staying until everything is hunky-dory is as bad as cold-turkey withdrawal, and that the candidates who can adress Iraq objectively and tell the voters exactly what they want to do and why has the most to gain.

I pity Juan.  He’s a great thinker, with a TON of knowledge, but he’s so invested in his ideological agenda that it has ruined his ability to look at anything objectively.  Sad. 

Eh, I’ll still read his last book probably. 

"I bet that he also believes that Shiites and Sunnis didn’t attend a Christmas Mass together yesterday."

I bet he does believe that the minute he is given these facts (because he may be biased, but he ain’t the type that lies), but I also bet no one can account for everything anecdote-wise.

He says, explicitly, that the public no longer thinks Iraq is top priority. Last time I checked no longer means that it has been top priority, but isn’t today. In short, Juan might be wrong in saying it is more important than the economy - but he doesn’t, insted saying they are rivals in import. He is fully correct in stating that the statement "The public no longer has it as a central issue" is a sort of myth, considering tied for first place still is first place in this situation.

"What’s more, Cole seems to think that those who say that Iraq is their number one issue want the US to withdraw. Isn’t it possible, however, that quite some of those who say it’s their number one reason to vote in 08 are conservatives who believe that the war must be won, against all cost? Why yes, of course."

I can’t see him implying anything like that in the main column, and while he links to the LA Times it is folly to suggest he uses the LAT article to imply that those who feel strongly for Iraq want out ASAP. Even if the LAT article has that angle, he only quotes this part:

"In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy had become more important to them than in previous months (in November only 14% said it was their most pressing concern), but Iraq still rivals it as an issue! "

Michael, I think you are the lazy one here; not only do you only spend time with mostly one tenth of the article - time you spend on faulty criticism of semantics or criticism of statements that aren’t there - but you try to lump together "the rest" of his points into some ideological display of self-delusion that committs the unthinkable crime of not subjecting itself to the logic that a drop in violence means that long-term stabilizing changes have been made by and between the various factions in Iraq (when it could also be ascribed to more troops having  far too long periods of duty which they spend on keeping the separate enclaves inside gated communities).

"When you don’t like reality, call it a myth."

When you don’t like an article’s message, make a simplifying quip.

As KS included, Juan Cole is the Librul ME expert you should be debating, John Cole is the former Repuglican at Balloon Juice. I believe that John and Juan don’t see "eye to eye", so maybe a correction is appropriate.

Liberal Middle East expert John Cole published a post in which he exposes the ?top ten myths about Iraq.? His name is JUAN Cole, Michael. JOHN Cole is the blogger at Balloon Juice. Not that it even matters that there is actually a John Cole who is a completely different person from Juan Cole. Juan Cole’s name is clearly visible on his blog. And you do this twice, so I know it’s not a typo. Just carelessness.

Echo Kevin. Juan Cole is deeply invested in liberal and anti-Israeli ideology, and it completely colors and obscures his work. Which is a shame, as he is indeed deeply knowledgable.

Kind of like Krugman in his own way.

my my are we grumpy the day after Christmas.

Nothing to be grumpy or not grumpy about. Christmas isn’t my holiday, so it doesn’t factor into anything for me. Although it IS nice to have my daughter home for winter break. What?s it now, Juan?s your boyfriend or something?

As far as I know, Prof. Cole is happily married, but if that ever changes. …

"Not necessarilly. It could be because the US Army has erected walls everywhere and has turned privates into bouncers for these gated communities."

It could be, Xel, but it isn’t.

Actual observations on the ground by guys like Michael Yon and Michael Totten say that reconciliation and local governance is what’s doing the trick.

Sometimes you have to read stuff from people who have spent appreciable time in Iraq to find out what’s happening there.

Actual observations on the ground by guys like Michael Yon and Michael Totten say that reconciliation and local governance is what’s doing the trick.

What Michael Yon and Michael Totten say is not necessarily the gold-plated, word of God truth, Jimmie. Michael Yon and Michael Totten are not disinterested observers. They both support the U.S. military occupation of Iraq; they both were in favor of the invasion and supported the war from the start. They are not truly independent journalists; they both embed with the U.S. military, exclusively.

Which, of course, is why they are the ONLY "journalists" whose "observations on the ground" are EVER quoted by war supporters. If one were to take right-wing blogs to heart and not read anything else, one would think that Yon and Totten were the only two journalists reporting in Iraq. 

Happily, the idiot impostor Cole has ruined his academicide career by his senseless mindless rantings. I myself am an Arabist & recognize that Cole knows and understands a lot about the Sunni/Shi’ite divide. However, perfesser Juan has lied & exaggerated at every turn, employing his real knowledge as a polemical tool which is a blunt sledgehammer, not a surgical instrument.

Cole was rejected by Yale for his sleazy polemics and whoremaster antics. He gets face time on MSNBC, but no one really takes him seriously except seriously silly lefties.

Which, of course, is why they are the ONLY "journalists" whose "observations on the ground" are EVER quoted by war supporters.

Gee, Kathy, since they’re among the very few journalists that are actually consistently "in the field" rather than sipping mojitos in the Green Zone after occasional daring eight-hour helicopter visits to select areas, they might actually have  a better grasp of actual events than the latter. Personally I find them dependable because what they report comes complete with warts, and matches up with what I hear from the many many people I know who have been (and in some cases still are) in Iraq with the 1/34 (Go Bulls!) and the 3CAV and other units. Including my former (and hopefully future) co-blogger Bobby Bran, who has been pretty continuously in theater since the Afghan invasion and is currently leading the PRT team in Wasit province.

Somehow I trust them more than Juan Cole–or you, or Harry Reid. Go figure.

The other “myths” Cole lists are all meant to prove that the surge didn’t help one bit, and that violence in Iraq isn’t down because of what Bush has done. So, why is violence down? The answer is, of course, reconciliation. O, no, that would mean that something good is indeed true, so Cole can’t accept that. So, he calls political reconciliation a myth as well, concluding that the violence is down because of a miracle. I bet that he also believes that Shiites and Sunnis didn’t attend a Christmas Mass together yesterday. When you don’t like reality, call it a myth.

The Xmas mass is a Potemkin village like the McCain market visit. I like how the word "crowded" is used when these stories paint a different picture. Seems attendance was down and a majority of the 3% Chaldeans are no longer in Iraq.http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/12/25/iraqs_christian_population_shrinking/2316/

BAGHDAD, Dec. 25 (UPI) — Iraq’s dwindling Christian population celebrated Christmas Tuesday — but in much smaller numbers than previous years.

Some Iraqi priests estimate as many as two-thirds of the country’s Christians — about 1 million people — have fled since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The homes and businesses of Christians have been frequent targets of insurgent attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/world/middleeast/25iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Sacred Heart church in Baghdad attracted 120 people for Christmas Eve Mass Monday, down from 400 in 2005.

BAGHDAD — Inside the beige church guarded by the men with the AK-47s, a choir sang Christmas songs in Arabic. An old woman in black closed her eyes while a girl in a cherry-red dress, with tights and shoes to match, craned her neck toward rows of empty pews near the back.

“Last year it was full,” said Yusef Hanna, a parishioner. “So many people have left — gone up north, or out of the country.”

Sacred Heart Church is not Iraq’s largest or most beleaguered Christian congregation. It is as ordinary as its steeple is squat, in one of Baghdad’s safest neighborhoods, with a small school next door.

But for those who came to Sacred Heart for Mass on Christmas Eve, there seemed to be as much sadness as joy. Despite the improved security across Iraq, which some parishioners cited as cause for hope, the day’s sermon focused on continuing struggles.

Iraq’s Christians have fared poorly since the fall of Saddam Hussein, with their houses or businesses frequently attacked. Some priests estimate that as much as two-thirds of the community, or about one million people, have fled, making Sacred Heart typical. Though a handful have recently returned from abroad, only 120 people attended Mass on Monday night, down from 400 two years ago.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3095598.ece

Sorrow haunts the face of the Iraqi mother as she leads her two small sons into a heavily guarded Baghdad church for Christmas Mass. Making the sign of the Cross, Maida Moshy slots into an empty pew to listen to the service, held in the afternoon of Christmas Eve because midnight is deemed too dangerous.

“I feel sad when I remember what Christmas used to be like with my large family,” said Ms Moshy, with a sigh. Years of violence since the war prompted six of her ten siblings to leave Iraq or move to the safer Kurdish north, while four of her husband’s five brothers and his sister have also fled. “I want my relatives to return because I hate being alone at Christmas,” said Ms Moshy, 32. “Without them I feel like a Christmas tree with no decorations.”

At the Virgin Mary Church that she attended in central Baghdad, a twinkling Christmas tree by the altar offers a taste of festivity but fails to dispel the pervading sense of emptiness as the holiday season reminds Christians across Iraq about the tens of thousands of loved ones who will not be with them this year.

Services that once drew thousands of worshippers to celebrate into the early hours of Christmas Day now struggle to attract enough people to fill half the pews, and barely last 60 minutes. A drop in the violence over the past six months has failed to boost attendance, with Christians saying that there are fewer people visiting the scattering of churches in Baghdad this Christmas than in 2006 because so many families have moved abroad, and the enduring fear of violence.

I didn’t see Sadr, al-Hakim or Sistani in that picture. When these three do Xmass mass then you have real reconciliation. 

Gee, Kathy, since they’re among the very few journalists that are actually consistently "in the field" rather than sipping mojitos in the Green Zone after occasional daring eight-hour helicopter visits to select areas, they might actually have  a better grasp of actual events than the latter.

But I’m not talking about "the latter." I’m not talking about Christopher effing Hitchens, for goodness sake. I’m talking about journalists who do real investigative reporting, on their own, and not embedded with U.S. troop units.

Even many mainstream journalists working for traditional news media sources are more independent than Yon and Totten are.  Read Anthony Shadid or Rajiv Chandrasekaran, both of whom write for the Washington Post, and both of whom have written books about the war and the occupation. They don’t routinely travel with the military, and they certainly don’t hang out in the Green Zone. They actually go into neighborhoods and get to know the people there, interview Iraqis where they live and work. They talk to Sunni tribal chiefs without American military minders around. They talk to insurgents and people who are not "working with the Americans." They ask questions and then work to find the answers, even when those answers might not put the Bush administration or the U.S. military planners in a less rosy light.

It’s true Yon and Totten don’t stay in the Green Zone, and that’s certainly to their credit, but they are watched over and under the protection of the U.S. military at all times. That doesn’t mean something couldn’t happen, but they are certainly not putting themselves at risk to find out what’s going on when our military is not around. They don’t talk to Iraqis who aren’t recommended or introduced to them by Americans. They don’t go into Sunni and Shia neighborhoods and talk to people in their homes or businesses. They don’t interview the Sunni leaders and ask them how they view the surge, or why they are cooperating, for now, with Americans, or what their plans are for after the Americans go home. They don’t do investigative reporting at all. They simply travel with the U.S. military and take notes on what our guys tell them and show them, and what they might see along the way. They’re stenographers, not reporters or journalists.

I’m not necessarily saying what Yon and Totten do has no value, or that there’s no place for that kind of writing. But please. Let’s not pretend that these two are seeing Iraq as it really is or even that they want to.

Let’s not pretend that these two are seeing Iraq as it really is or even that they want to.

And let’s not pretend you have the vaguest idea of what you’re talking about, either. You’re constructing a straw man wherein even associating with the military makes all accounts unreliable. Shadid hasn’t been reporting in Iraq since 2004–he’s in Lebanon now, and that’s as close as he’s come since his 2004 reporting. Likewise with Chandrasekaran. Your "view" of Iraq there is three years old, and assumes that Shahid and Chandrasekaran were being told the truth by adverse parties, when they had no way of checking their stories. They didn’t do "investigative reporting." They did "human interest" interviews, at best second-hand accounts and second-hand opinions. Most of the time they were in Iraq they were there under the protection of Saddam’s government, and afterwards they left before the insurgency got rolling.

Not to run them down, especially Chandrasekaran, as they did good work–but let’s call it what it was. And let us note that the reason no one is quoting their "on the ground" work nowadays is that they haven’t been "on the ground" there for three freakin’ years, while Totten and Yon have actually been in theater for most of that three-year period. Almost all the remainder of the reporting coming out of Iraq has been coming from Iraqi stringers of dubious reliability, filtered through those Green Zone "reporters."

Love the attempted smearing of Yon and Totten as mere "transcriptionists" too. And the smearing of the entire U.S. military as liars. They do disagree with the leftist narrative on Iraq. But it’s hardly their fault that the narrative is mostly fiction nowadays.

And (to veer back hard to topic) the narrative is what Cole cannot let go of, and that’s his problem. The more he tries to rationalize the narrative, the siller he will look.

Shadid hasn’t been reporting in Iraq since 2004–he’s in Lebanon now, and that’s as close as he’s come since his 2004 reporting. Likewise with Chandrasekaran.

That’s fine, Tully, but whether either of these two are in Iraq now was not my point. My point is that, as journalists, they talked to many different people, representing different segments of Iraqi society, and did not rely entirely on the U.S. military to tell them what Iraq was like.

Your "view" of Iraq there is three years old, and assumes that Shahid and Chandrasekaran were being told the truth by adverse parties, when they had no way of checking their stories.

And Yon and Totten have been able to check their stories? With whom? Iraqis now are "adverse parties" and the U.S. military is the sole source of truth?

And let us note that the reason no one is quoting their "on the ground" work nowadays is that they haven’t been "on the ground" there for three freakin’ years, while Totten and Yon have actually been in theater for most of that three-year period.

And you are saying that is why the right quotes Yon and Totten endlessly as "on the ground" sources to the exclusion of any other sources? Chandrasekaran and Shadid are examples of journalists who go beyond the U.S. military for their information — they are not the only ones.

It’s true that Yon and Totten have been in Iraq much of the last three years, but so what? They have spent all or most of that time traveling with the U.S. military and haven’t talked to anyone but the U.S. military and U.S. military-recommended sources. Their "insights" are useless.

Love the attempted smearing of Yon and Totten as mere "transcriptionists" too. And the smearing of the entire U.S. military as liars.

Actually, diarists might be a better word. The term "transcriptionists" is more accurately applied to the White House press corps. They write online diaries, or logs, of what they see and are told while traveling with the military. That is not reporting or journalism.

Moreoever, I did not use the word "liar" or imply that the U.S. military "lies." Most of the time I’m sure the Americans Yon and Totten travel with tell the truth as they see it, but they do have a point of view, and it’s in their self-interest to view conditions in Iraq in as positive a light as possible. They are hardly disinterested parties. Good war reporting requires the military’s point of view, but not to the exclusion of all other points of view. You cannot get an accurate picture of what’s going on in Iraq or understand what’s happening there or why just from talking to the U.S. military people there.

That’s common sense.