A soldier tells a reporter in the first frame of this editorial cartoon in the Indy Star: "Today we reopened a school in Baghdad and built a soccer field in Tikrit, but we still have a lot of work to do." The reporter turns to the camera: "Our soldiers are bogged down in a quagmire with no exit strategy." I identified this media reflex in this item in my B&C blog, but concluded that if both Friedman and the Weekly Standard say they have good reasons to criticize Bush about Iraq, that says something. But constant contrarian Jonathan Rauch makes the media-are-blowing-it-out-of-proportion case in the National Journal.