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Don’t miss this piece in today’s Washington Post on the survey Stars and Stripes — not exactly the liberal media — did of soldiers in Iraq, and what they found.

What’s surreal about the White House’s new claims that the press is keeping all the good news from Iraq (reopening schools and so forth) hidden — faithfully parroted by the usual suspects — is that it’s really hard to find anyone who’s been in the country recently or for any significant period of time who thinks that’s true.

It seems to be an insight vouchsafed mainly to conservative newspaper columnists.

The Stars and Stripes survey — though non-scientific — seems to lend credence to that perception. Despite not being from a randomized cross-section of those serving in Iraq, says Stars and Stripes editor David Mazzarella, “We still think the findings are significant and make clear that the troops have a different idea of things than what their leaders have been saying.”

Every time I hear some conservative wag trumpeting “the schools, the schools!” I have to admit it gives me flashbacks to Herve Villechaize and the intro to Fantasy Island (“de plane, de plane!”).

The schools are great. But we’re not there to reopen schools. More to come soon on this issue of the schools.

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