"Dude, Where's My Civil War?"

Is the mainstream media's world crashing down on them, big time? First, Ralph Peters in today's New York Post reports from the streets of Baghdad:

I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.
Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.
And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.
All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.
And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.
Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that?

That's good news, so it doesn't exist in the mind of the media. Peters takes a well-deserved smack at the New York Times; and the next up with a wacking stick is the federal government, which has finally had enough of the Times' (and MSM as a whole) treasonous behavior in wartime...from The Corner:

The Washington Post sounds the alarm this morning with a front page story headlined "White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks; Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted." It seems the administration is actively looking for the sources of those damaging leaks about the NSA surveillance program and the CIA's so-called "secret prisons" abroad.

From the WaPost article:

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post...

Stop crying, Keller, you brought this upon yourself. The Times headlined the call for the special prosecuter to investigate the cooked-up Valerie Plame affair; after all, the leaker who gave away Valerie's "secret identity" had harmed national security! So now the special prosecuters are coming after the Times to find out who blew the whistle on secret renditions and communications survailance, two leaks which probably did just a little bit more damage to America's wartime effort than the exposure of Ms. Plame as a stay-at-home spy.

The Times unleashed the beast; it cannot complain now that it has turned on them. And Mr. Keller; putting secret government anti-terror activities on page one can and may be considered treason, as you are soon about to find out. The other fact that you are going to stumble upon, too late, is that an angry American public has zero interest in supporting your cause, and will enjoy watching you twist, slowly...

And before you screech about the government curtailing freedom of the press, where are those "cartoon Muhammads" I keep hearing so much about? OK to self-censor when it comes to hurting the feelings of poor little Muslims, but you forget about the practice when it comes to American military/intelligence operations? Hmmmm....

Will the Times' attempt to bring down the President actually bring down the Times instead? Yup, it can happen - look under Rather, Dan and CBS News...