Bias? What bias?

1. All the big dailies (here, here for examples) are making hay with the troop increase tied to the election. Watch for the "escalation" buzzword to be used in the MSM. They are always, always grasping for the Vietnam analogies. From the Post article:

"The fact that we are increasing numbers, and the likelihood that the fighting will continue for a long time, highlights a fundamental problem: Our active-duty ground forces are much too small," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University strategy expert. "We should have begun expanding them some time ago."

He's right of course. 2. Here's a few headlines that are doing their best to cast our Fallujah victory as a loss. I'm not linking to the stories. A waste of time. Truly amazing:

Fallouja Fight Among Deadliest In Years For U.S. Los Angeles Times Seventy-one U.S. troops died in the November battle to retake the city of Fallouja, according to the top Marine commander in Iraq, a toll significantly higher than the previous count of 51 deaths.

Insurgency Leaves Mosul Ill-Prepared For Elections USA Today With only two months to go until Iraq's general elections, the local government has yet to devise a plan for registering voters in one of the country's largest cities. Insurgents torched most of the city's records during an uprising last month.

Enemy Gains Some Respect Miami Herald Standing in the rubble, the soldiers gathered the AK-47s and RPGs left by the group of fighters who had fled. The house, yet another in a line of dozens, if not hundreds, was blown apart by Bradley and Abrams tank fire.

And here's some from yesterday:

In Falluja's Ruins, Big Plans And A Risk Of Chaos New York Times ...As military officials here prepare to start letting the first residents return to Falluja, possibly as soon as mid-December, they face an unusual challenge: how to win back the confidence of the people whose city they have just destroyed. Their task will be made harder by the need to deter returning insurgents, who will try to sabotage the reconstruction with attacks, commanders say.

Deaths In Combat Ricochet Here At Home USA Today ...As if by ricochet, each American service man and woman killed in combat leaves behind a trail of secondary casualties: spouses, children, parents. Through Nov. 20, 45% of the 1,374 U.S. service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since September 2001 were married, the Defense Department says. Considered survivors, the widows and widowers of war dead are among the conflict's walking wounded. Amid heavy fighting in recent weeks, the toll is rising. Monthly Death Toll Reaches Record Set In April USA Today Driven by a sweeping offensive against insurgent forces in Fallujah and other cities in the Sunni Triangle, November equaled April as the deadliest month for U.S. forces fighting in Iraq. U.S. Troops Still Dying In Ramadi Amid 'Relative Peace, Tranquillity' Los Angeles Times Although ambushes and bombings are routine there, the city doesn't need a Fallouja-style crackdown, say officers with a military unit.

You see? There are actually many more casualties than we think. It's all a mess. We are losing. Can't you tell? It's so obvious. It's chaos! Chaos I tell you! Troops are dying! We should leave! How arrogant of us to even invade in the first place! AHHHHHHH! Remember that old Teddy Roosevelt quote about the critics?

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech before the Hamilton Club, Chicago (April 10, 1899)