Blogs are (some) of the answer

I read (via Instapundit) my friend David Adesnik’s naturally confused/bemused reaction to the coverage of Saturday’s election in Iraq in the New York Times and the Washington Post. David is correct. It would indeed take an advanced Talmudist to parse the strange locutions and seemingly conflicting verbiage of these reports and arrive at some conclusion about the truth of what occurred.

Besides being another example of the risibility of the pretense that such publications are unbiased – you can almost see the jockeying between editors, reporters and headline writers, rising like a holograph of ambivalence from the printed page – it is also another reminder of the value of blogs. The Times and the Post have many fine writers (Burns and Filkins deserve their kudos), but it is not just that they are not – to my knowledge – fluent in Arabic that they are less interesting to read during events like Saturday’s election than Iraq the Model or Sooni. It is that these Iraqi bloggers frankly express their biases in virtually every post. There is no pose of objectivity which, in human endeavors, has yet to be achieved. For that reason sometimes I even trust their facts more. I can analyze those details directly based on where the bloggers are “coming from” and adjust accordingly. I don’t have to filter their reports through myriad staff meetings and the requirements of supposedly hands-off publishers. Of course it’s useful to have both (blogs and MSM) to compare.

Meanwhile, here’s Sooni today:

I think you all were surprised how peaceful the Vote was (in comparison with the last election the Zarqawi attacks were over 300 but in this Vote they were only 13), it wasn’t the security measures for sure nor the lack of suicide bombers but I think it’s the new situation that most of the Sunni Arabs voted like all other Iraqi sects and groups.
One may ask: what’s that got to do with stopping the attacks?

Firstly: for Zarqawi Sunni Arabs are like the backbone of his operations in Iraq because almost all his followers are from them and also they provide the logistic support for him and his fighters (most of the west side of Iraq is a Sunni Arabs provinces and it’s the major route for the Arab fighters that come from Syria), so starting to kill them without plan (B) will be a big mistake.

Secondly: I guess Zarqawi is also eager to know what the real situation in Iraq is, surely he knows about the Kurds and the Shia’s but he really need to know about the Sunni and who’s with him (people who said NO) and who’s against him, and this Vote is like a free survey that will help him to set his future plans.

So there’s good news and bad news.