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Bridge-Burning, Part III
I've noticed since the war started that nearly every post from the Instaman (save one link to Mickey Kaus this weekend) has been of the "great news from the war!" variety. Same from the other hawk-bloggers.

Things are going swimmingly. If we're losing troops, it's to be expected. Iraqis are welcoming us with open arms, except the ones who aren't, and that's to be expected. Iraqis are surrendering. Nothing about the unexpected resistance in the south. Nothing about the eight thousand troops originally captured by the British who are now again fighting against coalition forces. Nothing about how the Bush administration continues to exaggerate world support for this war.

And for all the talk about how blogs are self-correcting, I've yet to see any of the major warbloggers post a correction of good-news-from-the-war stories they linked to that later turned out to be false.

It's one thing to favor the war. It's another to to blinded by your enthusiasm for it. It'll be interesting to watch tomorrow, for example, to see how many warbloggers link to the Fox vs. the peace protesters story (a fairly blatant example of bias), and how many pile on the Peter Arnett-loves-Saddam story (come on, does anyone really think that Peter Arnett is a traitor?). And it'll be interesting to see which story they're more critical of.

Reynolds is free to post what he likes, of course. It's his site. But I'm starting to suspect that war fervor has turned many of the high-traffic warbloggers -- who have always been quick to criticize their own in the past -- into Pentagon mouthpieces, crippled by what Will Wilkinson once dubbed "viewpoint bias."

It's troubling to see just how quickly hawks normally skeptical of government are to take government at its word in times of war -- times when our government has been most inclined to lie to us. It is possible to still support the troops and not take all Don Rumsfeld says as doctrine.