Why isn’t it being reported on by our taxpayer funded media, and their competitors?
Via Instapundit
Amir Taher has been touring Iraq. .

Iraq today is no bed of roses, I know. I have just come back from a tour of the country. But I don’t recognise the place I have just visited as the war zone depicted by the Arab and western media.
[…]
Despite the continuing terrorist violence Iraq has attracted more than 7m foreign visitors, mostly Shi’ites making the pilgrimage to Najaf and Karbala where (despite sporadic fighting) a building boom is under way. This year Iraq has had a bumper harvest with record crops, notably in wheat. It could become agriculturally self-sufficient for the first time in 30 years.
“Iraq has always had everything that is needed to build a successful economy,” says Heydar al-Ayyari, an Iraqi politician. “We have water and fertile land. We have oil and a hardworking people. What we lacked was freedom. Now that we have freedom we can surge ahead.”
Nor should one believe the claims of self-styled experts that the Iraqis are not ready for freedom. During the past 10 months elections have been held in 37 municipalities. In each case victory went to the moderate, liberal and secular candidates. The former Ba’athists, appearing under fresh labels, failed to win a single seat. Hardline Islamist groups collected 1% to 3% of the vote.

What is wrong with our media? What great dysfunction has set in, that I must go to the internet, to private sources, to find these reports for myself?
Surely there are reporters and editors who surf through here. I see it in my logs- “cbc.ca”, “abc.com”.
I want to hear from you. You covered every anti-war demonstration. You quoted every naysaying Canadian politician. You gave a closeup to every half-wit Hollywood actor who could move their lips. You covered UN deliberations. You’ve dissected every hoped for disaster, from the “massive humanitarian disaster” to the “quagmire” of the stretched supply lines, to the “failure” to catch Saddam, to the “uprising of the Arab street”, to the “Vietnam” of El Sadr’s militia, dancing to the rhythm of every RPG to be tossed into the Green Zone. You even reported on the ones that “caused no casualties”. So, it’s not like you didn’t have the time and space.
Are you intentionally trying to mislead and misinform the Canadian public by reporting out a tiny window facing in a single direction?

Actually, that’s unfair. In recent years, the National Inquirer has cleaned up its act. They actually fact check their stories.
The New York Times simply buries the ones that don’t slide neatly into the intended bias. The fiasco of last week, in which the 9/11 Commission allegedly declared “No Ties Between Saddam And Al Queda” has properly been debunked throughout the blogosphere, and disavowed by the commission members themselves.
Until now, the media was given the benefit of the doubt – if you can call it that. They were characterized as sloppy or conveneintly obtuse. It turns out, that it’s been a little more complicated than that.

The New York Times reports an Iraqi document — one that it obtained several weeks ago, but that the 9/11 Commission seems somehow to have overlooked — outlining collaboration between Saddam and Osama back in the 1990s. This is, of course, consistent with these media reports of such contacts from 1999.

That’s right. They were sitting on evidence that refuted their own reporting.
Go read Glenn Reynolds round up of links, including this timeline.
Jeff Goldstein;

New York Times: “Okay, so there is a document proving ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but the document doesn’t really prove prove those ties — or rather, it does prove prove ties…
…but it doesn’t exactly prove prove that Bin Laden and Saddam ordered a single milkshake and two spoons, if you catch our drift.”