Newsweek has grasped the obvious

Seven Days of Hell

With fewer Western journalists covering the war-torn nation, the true grim picture of continued violence isn’t getting out. Our correspondent reports on the last week.

Nov. 27 - To a casual observer, the past week seemed to have been seven days of comparatively good news for the war in Iraq. Abu Musab al Zarqawi's No. 2 was captured in Mosul, while in Fallujah the victorious Marines were uncovering torture chambers and hostage prisons, bomb labs and mosque-based armories. The prime minister's kidnapped relatives were released. Major powers and Iraq's neighbors got together in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and agreed to forgive 80 percent of Iraq's foreign debt, while supporting elections, which the government announced would take place Jan. 30, 2005, after weeks of speculation they might be delayed, as many rebellious Sunnis had demanded. "We feel we've broken their back and their spirit," said Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "After Fallujah," added the Iraqi national security adviser, Qassim Daoud, "we saw terrorist activities, bombings, mines, reduce dramatically in Baghdad and elsewhere, clearly confirming our analysis that Fallujah was a safe haven for terrorists."

It was pretty good spin, but that's all it was.

[...]

Why then was the public perception, at least in the United States, dramatically different? Partly it's because there are fewer Western journalists here than at any time in the war so far, and most of them are either embedded with military units, or largely confined to assorted bunkers around the capital. (NEWSWEEK correspondents themselves have been either in the Green Zone or embedded since October.) Getting a broad view of the war has become harder than ever before; even investigating major incidents can be nearly impossible. For instance, two weeks ago 60 Iraqi police recruits reportedly were kidnapped from their hotel in Rutbah, in Anbar province, and to date no one has been able to confirm what became of them, because Rutbah is too dangerous to reach, even for Iraqi journalists. Compounding the problem, both Iraqi and coalition authorities often simply don't report much of what happens, while private contractors almost never reveal attacks on their reconstruction efforts, even when their foreign personnel are killed (although 190 such deaths have surfaced so far this year, it's a fraction of the probable total).

Here then is a necessarily incomplete, but nevertheless alarming chronicle of seven days in the war in Iraq, culled from interviews with Iraqis, foreign contractors and Western officials, wire services, confidential security and intelligence daily reports, and even military press releases.

Read on...