Is The Potemkin War Finally Ending?

John McCain's latest attempt to mischaracterize the situation in Iraq backfired badly, and here's why: He needed a compliant press corps to make sure that his "stroll" through the Baghdad market successfully bamboozled the public. It didn't work this time. They decided to widen the camera angle - literally and metaphorically - so that the public could see what was really happening.

You can't blame a guy for trying. This war has been sold through a series of thinly-disguised photo ops and scripted stories from the beginning. A cooperative and self-serving media was instrumental in selling illusion as reality. How was the hapless Senator McCain to know that the rules had changed?

The Stage-Managed War first announced itself with the tearing down of Saddam's statue, which was made to appear as if a large crowd had spontaneously gathered. Reporters in Baghdad could see it all from the Palestine Hotel, however, and knew that only a small and hastily assembled crowd was present. (Photos here.) They chose to help the Administration promote artifice over reality and set the tone for the next five years of coverage.

The same thing happened when the Pentagon presented Jessica Lynch as a gun-totin' superhero after the military took her from the hospital where Iraqis were treating her gun wounds. Even after Private Lynch showed extraordinary courage by telling the public her real story, some press outlets continued to hype the false one.

From the "Mission Accomplished" banner to the hiding of our heroes' coffins, this war has been stage-managed from the start. There hasn't been such massive artifice since the days that (as the story goes) Grigori Potemkin constructed artificial villages along the Dniepper River to convince the Empress that the land he had captured in Crimea was setlled and prosperous.

So what changed this time? A Google News search of "McCain" and "Baghdad" this morning came up with 454 stories, including the New York Times piece in which merchants in that market demolish the idea that it's a safe place and an AP report which quotes a merchant as saying McCain's visit was "propaganda."

It just so happens that Iraqi authorities reduced the length of the Baghdad curfew by two hours, concurrently with McCain's visit. The Iraqi general in charge of security said it was done "because the security situation has improved and people needed more time to go shopping."

Shopping? Hey, isn't that what McCain was just doing? That's the kind of fortuitious "coincidence" that's driven the selling of this war effort from the beginning. An announcement like that used to be enough to drive the media into silence.

Instead, many journalists have been outspoken about the artificial nature of the McCain "stroll," with its 100 troops nearby and helicopter gunships circling overhead. They even widened the camera angle enough to show that McCain was wearing a bulletproof vest during his shopping spree (video here).

They've also reported on the tragic deaths that occurred despite - or perhaps as a result of - McCain's visit. As one journalist put it:

21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

Am I the only one who's angry that 100 of our soldiers were placed in harm's way for a political photo op? And those longer shopping hours won't protect those Iraqis who can't command helicopters and dozens of soldiers every time they run low on provisions.

As for the media, why the change? I can't say for sure. I do know that I've developed personal relationships and correspondences with some of the reporters I've criticized - sometimes harshly - and I've found them to be increasingly open-minded, especially when I stay reasonable and open myself.

The media's changing behavior may also be the result of the horror they share with other Americans at the tragedy and waste of this war. There may be an element of remorse for their own role, although that's speculation on my part.

Nor does it help that McCain, whose primary constituency is the press, chose to bitch-slap them in order to cover his own embarrassment over his initial gaffe about some neighborhoods in Baghdad being safe. They took that behavior from the Bush team, but perhaps in McCain's case familiarity has bred a level of contempt. He who lives by the media falls by the media.

Falling poll numbers for both the war and McCain may have contributed to the media's newfound courage, too. Either way, the McCain Stroll was a major strategic blunder from which he may never recover.

It's beginning to look like the curtain is finally coming down on Potemkin War, which was scripted by the GOP and produced by the media for five years. How long will it be until the real one - the one with all the killing and dying - finally ends, too?