Der Spiegel Hedging Bets?

Ray Drake, writing at David's Medienkritic, has found a real shocker. Der Spiegel, a longtime basher of the American efforts in Iraq, has been relentless in calling the war a disaster. Only now they have shockingly changed their tune. Not by a small amount, either.

Historical consistency has never been a strong point for SPIEGEL magazine or SPIEGEL ONLINE - but this is shocking:

Just look at this article.

After years of calling Iraq a disaster, debacle and quagmire, SPIEGEL ONLINE has decided to declare the following:

"The US military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe."

This all stems from last week's Der SPIEGEL magazine cover feature article by Ullrich Fichtner: An enormous, fascinating and remarkably honest report on the complex situation in Iraq. (The first link above in bolded-italics leads to the English translation of that report.) SPIEGEL ONLINE is also publishing Fichtner's report that US troops are in a remarkably good mood and have high morale. That also flies directly in the face of past SPIEGEL reporting that consistently depicted US troops as demoralized, depressed, defeated, prone to suicide and suffering from low morale.

Here's the rest of the paragraph that Drake gets that quote from:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction.

Drake has a link to one possible explanation of the sudden turnaround from Victor Davis Hanson.

Other Links to this Post

1. Wake up America-Media Rats Jumping Ship — Tuesday, 14 August , 2007 @ 11:06 am

2. Maggie's Farm — Wednesday, 15 August , 2007 @ 3:54 am

3. Blue Crab Boulevard » Donkey Island — Sunday, 19 August , 2007 @ 7:01 am