Elections? What Elections???

Well, that didn't take long. On another blog (Ausitn Bay's, I think) I made a comment suggesting that the MSM would do their best to downplay the enormous success that was the Dec. 16th Iraqi vote. So here it is one day later and I'm looking at my soon to be former home page, MSNBC News, and here are five of the top six featured stories:

Bush Spies.

Labor Strikes.

Russian Explosions.

Ice Storm Misery.

Al-Zarqawi detained, freed.

So, here we have all negative slanting features, one of coarse aimed at Bush, and there is one story in the group that deals with Iraq, and it's about another failure. But did they remember that there was a little thing called "Free Elections" that went on yesterday in Iraq. Well, kinda. But apparently it wasn't good news either:

"Experts cautious in assessing Iraq election.
Analysts: High turnout, low violence a positive step but not a turning point"

And the "good folks" at NBC couldn't sit down and write the story themselves. They had to import it from another newspaper. Having not yet examined the piece, I can guess that Juan Cole is mentioned in here somewhere, but lets see who is featured in the piece.

We have Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice accentuating the positive. No surprise there. You have Sen. Lindsay "O" Graham with a couple of tiny, for all we know taken out of context, blurbs.

Then we have Anthony H. Cordesman, a Persian Gulf military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies supposedly saying (this is not in direct quotes in the article, so I can't say if this is exactly what he said) "the vote is not the long-awaited turning point but rather a trigger for launching a new political process next year that will include amending a constitution. That, he said, will better determine whether Iraq has a chance of emerging out of turmoil".

And then we have - Hey! There He Is, Univ of Mich Prof Juan Cole, being optimistic as usual. And he gets direct quotes.

"The steady grind of this guerrilla war is going to go on. The elections are not relevant to it, and that's what is going to matter to the American people,"

The elections are not relevant to it? Then why bother. That's going to be the message. It just isn't possible that matybe the guerrilla's are LOSING because THEY ARE THE ONES KILLING THE INNOCENT IRAQI'S AND NOT THE U.S. OR SUPPORTERS OF DEMOCRACY!!! And have we already forgotten that the Sunnis voted en mass, finally turning their backs on Juans beloved guerrillas. I'm not going to fisk Juan here as so many have already done a much better job doing that than I could (more here). But, come on people. Can't we acknowledge the monumental hurdle that has just been crossed??

Nope. Guess not.

PS. VDH, the antidote for negative spin on the war.