Stories Disappearing – But Horror Remains – In Iraq
Lizza points to two pieces from the Washington Post. The first reports that "masked attackers with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks slaughtered at least 40 people in a crowded market area south of Baghdad on Monday, hurling grenades to blow up merchants at their counters and shooting down mothers as they fled with their children." That piece was bumped on the Post homepage by another report, this one bringing word that a "suicide car bomber beckoned a crowd of day laborers toward his explosive-packed minibus in the southern city of Kufa on Tuesday, then detonated a massive explosion that killed 53 people and wounded more than 100."
Lizza notes that the first story "didn't even make it above the fold" in this morning's Post. He asks: "How soon before these stories are relegated to A16?" It's understandable that the conflict in the Middle East would push the Iraq war out of the spotlight, especially as the Iraq conflict has gone on for so long that both the press and public may have developed "Iraq fatigue." But it's worth noting that we may now be entering a time when this kind of horror – in a country in which America is heavily invested – is no longer even considered one of the day's most pressing stories.