Dissonance at the Times by Thomas Donnelly

"It is an especially cruel but increasingly common irony of the war in Iraq that Washington and Baghdad are in separate universes: what happens over there is not much connected to what's happening back here. But Sunday's New York Times 'Week in Review' section sets a new standard for cognitive dissonance.

Spread across the top two-thirds of the front page is John Burns' latest dispatch from Iraq. The subject is the U.S. campaign to win back the city of Ramadi and al Anbar province from al Qeada and other Sunni extremists. A year after a Marine intelligence report described the region as 'lost,' Burns explains 'an astonishing success' in what was 'Iraq's most dangerous city.' Now, cooperation between local tribal leaders and the U.S. military 'has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies.' Victory, in Burns' assessment, is a long way off, but is possible."

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