New York Times and the validation of the Bush Doctrine. I have not read such a piece of propaganda since I read about that humanitarian gesture when the Saudi King helped a man to the stage during the OPEC summit. I grew up in a civil war-torn country and you learn that civil war is not a non-stop event: it has its ups and down, and people do menage to get married and drunk and celebrate while the civil war is going on. The article said that this was based on "more than 50" interviews (that means 51 interviews to be exact). How did the New York Times find them? Were they arranged by the Abu Risha family, or where they located by a security firm based in the US? So if people eat desserts in Iraq now, it is proof that Bush is making progress in Iraq. We will live in a time in the future when people will look back and regard the New York Times the way we today regard Saudi media. And notice this: "The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says."