GETTING READY FOR A BIG PUSH IN SADR CITY, and a media-related prediction: “This will likely take weeks to complete. Once the battle starts, expect to read and hear plenty of media reports emphasizing civilian deaths, setbacks in the battle, defections in the Iraqi Army, and statements of defiance from Sadr. What we won’t hear is progress by Maliki and the US in finishing off Sadr’s forces until it suddenly becomes impossible to ignore it — and then we will hear about how inept the Iraqi forces were in achieving victory. Call it the Basra Narrative. Just because it failed in Basra doesn’t mean the defeatist media won’t use it again, and again, and again.”

The basic rule of press coverage is that if there’s fighting, we must be losing. All wars produce ups and downs, bad news and good. It’s interesting, though, that our press seems mostly interested in making things look bad, though they’re not even very good at reporting the bad news that matters. Some related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Reader Walter Boxx emails: “The way the Japanese could tell they were losing WWII was that the great victories reported by their media were getting closer and closer to home. Our media problem is like a fun-house mirror version of this – the way we can tell we are winning is that our crushing defeats are happening less often and to different enemies.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader in Iraq whom I regard as reliable says to watch for some bad news from Basra in the next few days, though no specifics are included. Well, war generates good and bad news, so stay tuned. I have little doubt that the big-media crowd will be ever so swift in delivering it once it becomes public.