If anything, Iraq violence is being under-reported

Ever since the start of the war, when you try to inform someone who supports Bush's Iraq policy about all the violence and chaos that is taking place, what you get in return is the subjective rebuttal, "The liberal media only reports the bad stuff."

As Bush's endless pursuit to sell the war to the American public gets more difficult, web sites like Freedom Journal have been set up to combat what they consider to be an over-reporting of bad news on the ground.

But as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group Report shows, the bad news on the ground is actually being under-reported, not over-reported -- not just by the media, but by military databases:

"There is significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. The murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt US personnel doesn't count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were ninety-three attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

The report also said that violent attacks two months ago were numbered at 180 per day.  But those were only the attacks that were reported.  What about the attacks that went unreported?  It is possible that there could have been more than 200 that day.

So again, Limbaugh and Hannity can cry "liberal bias" all they want.  In the end though, the violence is occuring in such a large quantity that it can't all be reported.  And it's not the media's fault.  You try walking around Baghdad.  I don't think you would.  As a New York Times report last September showed, the level of violence makes it just about impossible for the news media to do its job in that country.

If you have a conservative friend that won't listen to anything you say about Iraq for the same reasons as outlined above, then you are in luck.  In Jon Stewart's farewell to the 109th Congress, he picked apart Rick Santorum's blaming of the media.  This is a helpful hint of how to respond.  Watch it below.