In a recent e-mail I made an observation: there is an incredible amount of noise to excise from most news reports, particularly those on the fluid situation in Najaf. Troll up to Google News. Some articles are splattered with editorial phrases and leftist code; others handpick Iraqi and foreign kooks as their interviewees. Headlines are atrocious, at once serving to catch the eye at the expense of accuracy. Worse, a great many follow the narrative describing random violence "breaking out" among morally equalized parties, an irresponsible technique I noted four months ago. While I appreciate the practice in objective reading and cross-reference, I wish journalists could be a little bit less opaque.

The Washington Post reports that Iraqi elite and special forces are filing into Najaf, and the Imam Ali Shrine is their target:

"The army will be deployed now" to the city, where U.S. forces have been fighting the militia, said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. Units of the new Iraqi army would immediately prepare for an offensive aimed at evicting al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army from the shrine of Imam Ali, a sacred site the militia has used as a refuge, he said.

...One battalion of Iraqi commandos is already in the city. The unit, previously known as the 36th Battalion, was trained by U.S. Special Forces and fought alongside U.S. forces in Fallujah in April. Another Iraqi battalion, trained by the regular army, refused to fight. The commando unit raided a mosque in Kufa this week, supported by a Marine unit that was kept at a distance.

Granted, the infamous Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this story, but one might hope that the Post can get straight the overwhelmingly shared desire to put an end to terrorist activity. The anonymous quote "Everyone wants to go ahead and finish this" is reassuring to our understanding of both the Post's veracity and the situation itself. As Alaa makes clear — intensely, and rightfully so — Iraqi people suffer precisely because evil men sow strife and unrest, committing violence and intimidation. They remain couched in relative safety and hope precisely because brave soldiers from within their borders and without take up arms against terrorists and outlaws. They want their leaders and allies to go the hell ahead and finish this.

THE IRAQI STREET: Ali give his analysis of Muqtada al-Sadr's apparent support and its underlying weaknesses.

EVIL BY ANY OTHER NAME: News agencies continue to fail to impress, framing the dichotemy of Baghdad's democratic conference and the continuing presence of anti-democratic forces in the country as a juxtaposition of "peace" and "violence" — which, of course, inculcates the idea of Allied and Iraqi government troops as equal partners with terrorists in senseless killing. The Christian Science Monitor comes close to getting it right, but still stops well short of abandoning the amoral language we find in a lot of today's reports from Iraq. The question of who is provoking whom is obvious — it's the lunatics firing mortars into crowded streets — but only through implication of events. This is nothing new: Misunderstanding evil's tirelessness leads smart fools to coin phrases like "cycle of violence," where the only solution is a juvenile fantasy of spontaneous peace, rather than the physical victory of peaceable men whose swords started out as plowshares. We're lucky the words of General Peter Chiarelli even made it into print:

We take no action unless we are fired upon. I can cite you example after example where we did not engage when forces fired upon us because to do so would have caused civilian casualties. I might add our enemy does not do the same.

There is a such thing as killing a man without malice. Can you ever get that from page A-3? Frustrating as the disconnect is, it helps to explain the relativist left's inability to cope with the war. They cannot accept that certain people will delight in consuming them.

DON'T REPORT IF YOU CAN'T: Ask and ye shall receive.