As the cliché goes, when you hit bottom, quit digging. Actually though, Newsweek hit bottom a few times in 2005, but it doesn't seem to know it. All I can assume from this cover is that they would rather have Saddam back in power were it possible, but unlike the L.A. Times' Jonathan Chait, they don't quite have the nerve to say it.

The American media ran a fair number of "botched occupation" stories along remarkably similar lines in 1946; it's surprising how little changes in over half a century.

Newsweek's latest cover is both of an example of "The Spinal Tap Media" in action (this one goes to 11!), and it's also an example of how to create--or hype--a story by not providing context. Richard Nixon’s Watergate crimes sound even more heinous by not mentioning that earlier presidents committed similar acts. The “Bush Lied, People Died” stories sound scary when you don't provide the context that President Clinton pursued a similar policy of regime change in Iraq. And of course, blaming future insurgents on America’s presence in Iraq disregards thousands of years of Middle Eastern history.

But like 2005’s “Koran In A Can” fable, it makes for a great magazine cover though, I guess.

Update: Also in the "life was easier under Saddam" department, earlier tonight, NBC anchorman Brian Williams interviewed fellow NBC News correspondent Jane Arraf, "who joined NBC last year after eight years with CNN", according to Newsbusters. Williams said, "we get asked all the time where are the views of normal Iraqi families? And where's the good news we know is going on there?"

Arraf replied:

Arraf: "I'll tell you what I think is a piece of good news that's out there every day that's really hard for us to get at. And it's a picture I try to keep in my mind when things get really horrible, it is, when you wake up early in the morning, if you can be out on the streets, which we can't anymore, the sun shining, there are children walking to school, there are girls and boys, there are Iraqi girls who are walking to school, and it's that wonderful sign of resilience that is the fabric, the background of life there. Now, to go out and do that story, we would not only be putting ourselves in danger and our local people in danger, we'd probably be putting those children in danger because that is the nature of television. I worked under Saddam Hussein in Saddam's Iraq, and this is harder now than it ever was then."