There has been a bit of grumbling in the U.S. lately that the mainstream media coverage of the war isn't particularly incisive. This observation is true but not terribly surprising.
Fortunately, this does not mean that the mainstream news is useless. You simply have to know the code.
Rule 1: Follow the nouns.
A favorite trick for stating the "facts" in a misleading way is to move nouns around in the sentence structure. Watch how the following paragraph (from Mar 31 Newsweek's special pullout) moves nouns from the subject, to an adjectival phrase, and finally to oblivion:
Once known as Mesopotamia. Iraq has been in turmoil for 5,000 years. Conquered by the Persians, Alexander the Great, Arab Muslims, and Ottoman Turks, it later became a British mandate. Instability continued into the 21st century...
Notice how the conquerors (Persians et al) occupy the clear subject position. When Britain rears its imperial head, "Britain" is placed in an adjectival phrase, and the verb switches from "conquer" to the passive "become". Then the Cold War powers start meddling in the region, but notice that the nouns United States and Soviet Union do not even appear at all. And we wonder why instability continues...
10:15:13 PM 
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