I’m missing something. And the jury is still out on Maliki. We have yet to see if walling off Sadr City and cutting off its inhabitants from basic services will pay good dividends or not.

So, while I think it’s odd that they would choose this scene to accompany the article, it’s of an actual event.  Well, it wouldn’t be odd behavior for the New York Times.  Would they pair an article on say new councilmen being sworn in with a massively fatal traffic accident?

But let’s look at one report of yesterdays violence.

Violence claimed at least seven lives in Baghdad Thursday, officials said.

A parked car bomb detonated near one of the entrances to the heavily fortified International Zone, killing one civilian and wounding five others, an Interior Ministry official said.

CNN reported three civilians were killed and 15 others were wounded by a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army convoy in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Mansour.

Coalition forces killed a suspected member of al-Qaida in Iraq when he reportedly pulled a pistol after troops stopped his car.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed when their vehicle flipped onto its side in Tikrit, the U.S. military said.

So 4 civilians were killed by bombs.  One suspected terrorist was killed.  And two US soldiers were killed in an accident.

And the headline is IRAQ VIOLENCE CLAIMS AT LEAST 7 LIVES

Not exactly accurate.

Aside from it looking like the burned out remnants of a car, it might be.

Yeah, I really can’t tell. It might just be that someone moved the remnants of the bombed car out of the way, and so there wouldn’t be any of the signs of the blast nearby. But what’s with the ubiquitous wailing woman?

But is a surging wave of bombings and attacks in Baghdad not significant context to the Sunnis rejoining the government?

I don’t why it would be, since the story mentioned nothing about a surge of bombings. It basically just talked about the Sunni bloc, the conditions given to Maliki and the offensive in Basra.

I could be mistaken, but I don’t recall James Glanz (the Baghdad Bureau chief, if I recall, as well as a PhD Astrophysicist) grinding any particular axes in his coverage.

Well I really doubt that Glanz had anything to do with the photo one way or the other. But his coverage of the Basra offensive hasn’t been very straight … he’s of the opinion that Maliki lost that campaign.