Even in Lebanon, they see the media untruths

But there is something disturbing, too, about the way opponents of the war have portrayed events in Iraq. Visceral distrust of Bush and his sidekick, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has brought with it a disregard both for facts and for the victims of the Iraqi tyrant, Saddam Hussein. Arab commentators have had no shame in urging their Iraqi brothers, exhausted by three major wars and more than a decade of sanctions, to start a new war “of liberation” against their liberators. Western commentators critical of the war have luxuriated in the failures of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) ­ failures that condemn Iraqis to protracted hardship.

Disaster has been prophesied, self-servingly, at every turn: The war would be protracted (it wasn’t, and most Iraqis had no direct experience of it); tens of thousands would die in the battle for Baghdad (they didn’t); and now, in the words of a British Arabist, “even the most optimistic and moderate Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war.

Ready for the truth? Iraq is getting better

Amazing. In Lebanon, they see the good. In America, they report the bad.