What if They Gave a Civil War and Nobody Came?

Ralph Peters of the New York Post has been scouring Baghdad, looking for the civil war. As Peters writes, it's being hidden well:

I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

If you didn't twig to the dig on the Gray Lady, there's more:

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

So, by employing the radical journalistic tactic of actually leaving the comfort of the hotel and going where the story is, what did the intrepid and innovative Mr. Peters find?

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.

All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.

And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

What??!! The downtrodden and radicalized population of Baghdad, victimized by the Imperial stormtroopers of the Zionist Bushitlerburton Neocon Conspiracy are cheering our soldiers and rejecting the bid by al Qaeda to foment a sectarian civil war?

Go and read the whole article.

Also posted at The Jawa Report and Vince Aut Morire.