The fearless John Burns of the New York Times is regarded by his colleagues and competitors to be one of the — if not the — premier reporters in Iraq. So it’s not surprising that Burns’ starkly depressing Baghdad dispatch in the New York Times — he writes that life there “has become a deadly lottery” — has made bloggers sit up and take notice.

“Just because John Burns says it’s so bad doesn’t make it so etc., etc.,” writes Gregory Djerejian. “But it means a hell of a lot more than, say, if Maureen Dowd did.” Pro-war blogger Cori Dauber is also a Burns fan, but he doesn’t quite believe him: “[H]e writes as if he’s tired, and depressed, so tired and so depressed that he can’t keep it out of his writing.” Arguing that Burns’ piece lacks confirmable numbers on casualties and other incidents (though it’s actually loaded with chilling statistics), Dauber adds this bit of rhetorical jujitsu: “So the facts are true, at least the fact that the policy exists, but in essence he is still reporting gossip, if you see what I mean, when what he should be saying is, there is this policy, the import of which is hugely negative, everyone is talking about it.”

Oh, OK.

James Wolcott notes that The Corner’s K-Lo mentioned in passing that the president was in a “good mood” during his press conference yesterday, and asks readers to “ponder that for a moment”:

The White House announces a press conference in the morning. After the announcement comes the news that 31 Americans died in a chopper crash in Iraq (6 others died [yesterday] in separate incidents). The president takes the podium fresh with the knowledge of that tragedy — and radiates a cheerful...

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