Yes, there is some good news out of Iraq, though you might never suspect it
from the general run of stories about bomb blasts in Baghdad and deadly
attacks on Iraqi and American forces elsewhere.
In case you missed it, a major political and economic achievement is now
within reach of Iraq's divided and beleaguered government: a long overdue
agreement on how to share that country's immense oil wealth without breaking
up the country.
The deal retains the central government's control of Iraq's vast oil
reserves, but splits the proceeds among its major regions - Sunni, Shiite,
and Kurdish - and encourages each to invite foreign investment on attractive
terms. Naturally, the final details remain to be worked out. (In the Great
Middle Eastern Bazaar, negotiations never end. There will always be details
to work out.) Still, the deal is almost done, and that's good news.
But you won't hear much celebrating - just criticism - on the part of the
war's opponents in this country, which now include much of the mainstream
media. Instead, this kind of progress will be dismissed as just another plot
by Big Oil/American Imperialism/Globalization. Take your choice of
cartoonish villains.
At such times, it occurs that if the major news outlets had covered
America's growing involvement in the Second World War in the same
accent-the-negative, eliminate-the-positive fashion, you might be reading
this page in German. Some American newspapers never ceased criticizing FDR
and "his" war even after Pearl Harbor supposedly united the country, with
Col. Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune leading the isolationist parade.
The Tribune went beyond just opposing the war. In June of 1942, immediately
after the Battle of Midway, it ran the Japanese order of battle, complete
with the names and fleet assignments of specific ships. And it noted that
all this intelligence had been "well known in American naval circles several
days before the battle began."
Citing "reliable sources in Š naval intelligence," the Tribune headlined its
front-page page story: "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea." The
headline might as well have said: "Americans Break Japanese Naval Code."
The Justice Department considered bringing charges against the newspaper
under the Espionage Act, but realized that doing so might only bring further
attention to the security breach. Though a federal grand jury was impaneled
at one point, the matter was eventually dropped. Happily, the Chicago
Tribune's circulation was highly limited in Tokyo. Besides, the Japanese
were confident their code was unbreakable, once again underestimating those
crude Americans.