BLIND, DEAF, AND DUMB JOURNALISM IN IRAQ

"Disregard what we told you last week." 

"Mainstream" journalists in Iraq haven't said that in so many words.  But the stories they're writing this week say it implicitly.

On March 31, six days of fighting between Iraqi government forces and the Iranian-backed militia nominally headed by the Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr subsided when al Sadr asked for a cease fire and his forces abandoned the battlefield.  We were told at the time the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had suffered a humiliating defeat.

"The peace deal between al Sadr and Iraq government forces — said to have been brokered in Iran — calmed the violence but left the cleric's Mahdi army intact and Iraq's U.S. backed prime minister politically battered and humbled within his own Shiite power base," wrote the AP's Robert Reid in a dispatch March 31.

"The week drew to a close with hundreds of Iraqi's dead, the prime minister weakened and al Sadr stronger than ever," said Dina Temple-Raston of National Public Radio.

"Mr. Sadr appears to be the one clear winner from the inconclusive fighting in the country's second biggest city," agreed Yochi Dreazen of the Wall Street Journal.

But this week's stories make clear that Mr. Maliki is not acting like someone who has suffered a humiliating defeat, and Mr. al Sadr is not behaving like someone who has won a big victory.

"Iraq's major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties have closed ranks to force anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or leave politics," the AP reported Sunday.

"We, the Sadrists, are in a predicament," said Hassan al Rubaie, leader of the 30-member Sadrist bloc in the Iraqi parliament.  "Even the blocs that had in the past supported us are now against us."

So much for Prime Minister Maliki having been politically weakened, and al Sadr being "stronger than ever," as Ms. Temple-Raston had opined.

How is Mr. al Sadr responding to this threat?  By looking for a fig leaf that will permit him to give in without losing face.

"Iraq cleric Moqtada al Sadr offered on Monday to disband his militia if the highest Shiite religious authority demands it," said Reuters.

Since it is well known in Iraq that the Ayatollah Ali al Sistani is no fan of sectarian violence, or of al Sadr's patron Iran, or of al Sadr himself, this is like asking John McCain to mediate whether U.S. troops should stay in Iraq.

This was, Reuters said, "a shock announcement when the (Mahdi Army) is the focus in an upsurge in fighting."

Actually, it's probably because the Mahdi Army has been getting its clock cleaned in the "upsurge in fighting" that Mr. al Sadr is considering disbanding his militia.  At the time he asked for the cease fire, 571 Mahdi Army fighters had been killed, 881 wounded, 490 captured and 30 surrendered, according to the information Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal received from his sources in the U.S. military.

The performance of the Iraqi army in Basra was, to put it charitably, uneven.  Many soldiers in one newly formed brigade refused to fight, and some went over to the enemy.  But other units fought well. 

When the fighting began, Iranian-backed militias and criminal gangs controlled all of Basra.  By the time Mr. al Sadr, from his hiding place in Iran, issued his call for a cease fire, government troops had taken control of the port (through which the militias were smuggling oil) and cleared two large neighborhoods. 

Iraqi troops and police have since expanded the areas of the city under government control.  Mahdi army revolts in the Shia cities between Basra and Baghdad — Diwaniyah, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla — were quickly put down.

Journalists have obscured the extent of the thumping the Mahdi Army took by lumping together friendly, enemy and noncombatant casualties, and by frantically moving goalposts.  Mr. Maliki failed, they said, because when the fighting ended, government troops weren't in control of all of Basra.  But before the fighting began, they were in control of none of it.

The Iraqi security forces have many shortcomings, but are much better than they were a year ago.  Journalists would be less often "shocked" by positive developments in Iraq if their reporting weren't colored so much by antiwar sentiment.

"I watched the Basra dust-up amazed at the willful obtuseness of 'war correspondents' who still refuse to acknowledge basic military realities," wrote retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters.

It seems that Sen. Joe Lieberman's description of the Democrat Party's approach applies to many journalists as well:   "See no progress in Iraq, hear no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq."

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.