The forgotten war

Hey, remember that war in Iraq? The one where we were gonna kick Saddam's @ss and be treated as liberators and score some cheap oil in the process?

Well, apparently, it's still going on.

Not that you can tell if you snap on the TV these days. Apparently, our liberal media just keeps on failing us when it comes to Iraq.

Former Bush White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in his upcoming book, "What Happened," "The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. In this case, the liberal media didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

And now, the liberal media has more or less forgotten to keep us up to date with what's going on over there in the desert:

"During the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of the newshole for network TV news. In 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent during that period. On cable networks it fell from 24 percent to 1 percent, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism."

As a result, by March 2008, a mere 28 percent of Americans knew that 4,000 military personnel had been killed in Iraq, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In another Pew poll last month, almost as many people thought the story of the Texas polygamist sect was as big as the Iraq war.

We've harped on this before, but maybe revisiting it now and again is OK when Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell calls it "the biggest political and moral issue of our time."

Of course, there are many reasons war coverage isn't what it used to be. War fatigue, for one - we're sick of the bad news. Americans can shirk from Colin Powell's "You break it, you bought it" doctrine and turn our attentions to celebrity baby bumps and David Cook's surprise "Idol" win before he skulks off into obscurity. Also, anyone left with a passing interest in the real world has turned attention to the election and Hillary Clinton's vow to keep campaigning until Barack Obama finally realizes that even though he's raised more money, draws bigger crowds and has more delegates, she's actually the better campaigner.

Plus, turns out that not only is throwing a war expensive - we're ponying up $5,000 a second to achieve a stalemate, by some estimates - but so is covering it. And given how on the ropes the media are these days, there are far fewer correspondents still based in Baghdad.

Besides, outside of a major loss of American lives, what's going on in Iraq is your everyday, garden-variety chaos, and therefore not of that much interest to most Americans, allowing them to tune out. Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner notes, "American deaths are pretty small, and the children of the political, business and chattering classes are not dying, and so the war no longer is on the radar screen most of the time. The bad economy has replaced it, and no one has yet succeeded in tying the trillion-dollar war to the decline in the economy." Which means maybe we'll pay attention again once we realize its devastating impact on our pocketbooks.

And, of course, there's the White House's hope that we will just forget the whole thing, by denying Americans the ability to see the war's toll.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank recently covered, or tried to cover, the funeral of a highly decorated solider at Arlington cemetery, where the press was kept far from the proceedings - even though the soldier's family wanted them to cover it:

"'There will be a yellow rope in the face of the next of kin,' protested one photographer with a large telephoto lens.

"'This is the best shot you're going to get,' a man from the cemetery replied.

"'We're not going to be able to hear a thing,' a reporter argued.

"'Mm-hmm,' an Arlington official answered."

We're not going to be able to hear a thing. And that's just how our government prefers it.