Wretch – Not sure it matters that much – I’m all for MSM-bashing and you’ve earned the right…But I remember reading desperate posts at Iraq the Model (and B.C.!) in the summer before the Surge – everyday life in the Bag couldn’t have been much worse and there was no hope – besides “stay the course” – being offered by Bush et al – I remember getting emails from a kid who’d volunteered to go back for a second tour as a medic in Iraq – He was turned off by what he saw pre-surge – heavy empahsis on “checking the boxes” – fostering illusions of “handing-over” to IA…Point is not to disparage the real progress that was made in the pre-Surge years – just to say the dark times weren’t manufactured by MSM – and that the Admin’s approach often seemed marked a the willful obliviousness that was the flip side of their orginary hubris…