Can't Make These Up: Old Media Searching Desperately for Bad News from Iraq

The search for bad news relating to Iraq must be getting awfully difficult.

First example -- From the "Looking for, and Not Finding, a Dark Cloud on a Sunny Day" Department (HT Confederate Yankee, who says "you can almost feel their pain"):

'Fragging' Is Rare in Iraq, Afghanistan

American troops killed their own commanders so often during the Vietnam War that the crime earned its own name - "fragging."

But since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has charged only one soldier with killing his commanding officer, a dramatic turnabout that most experts attribute to the all-volunteer military.

Yes, Associated Press reporter Estes Thompson actually spent over 650 words on the topic, "inspired" by only the second such Iraq-related incident, which is going to a military trial this week. In the process, he rehashes, almost nostaligically, the frequent fraggings (600, according to the Army, Thompson claims) that took place in Vietnam.

Second example -- From the "Inventing a Dark Cloud on a Sunny Day" Department:

As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch

Yes, showing sudden interest in the Iraqi economy, McClatchy writers Jay Price and Qasim Zein tell us that:

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

All I can say is: Things must be going "awfully" well over there.