All that's bad about BBC reporting can be found in this article at BBConline. Well, perhaps not all- but much.

What is news anyway? Is it what happens, or what you would like to happen, or what you think could happen, given enough publicity?

I give you the BBC's idea of news:

'Four US soldiers have been killed in insurgent attacks since late Tuesday.

The American deaths on Tuesday brought the toll from the day's violence to at least 36 people, making it one of the deadliest days since May.

According to a US opinion poll, for the first time a majority of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has not made the US safer.

The nationwide poll of 1,002 selected adults taken by the Washington Post and ABC News shows 52% believe the war has not contributed to America's long-term security with 47% believing it has.

Inferno

"We found three civilians' bodies torn completely apart," said Lt Col Thair al-Izzi in Baquba.'

Note the linkage here: the deaths, the polls in the US, The Horror.

Of course taken separately each item may have some newsworthiness of some sort. Taken together they're just propaganda for the so-called insurgents, whose aims we all understand, though their tactics seem bizarrely to smack of a desire to be on the losing side of history.

One could understand it if there was anything in the current attacks which showed a step change in Iraq, but there isn't. The Coalition casualties go through their ups and downs as they always have. Judging from the entrenchment near Falluja the evil men of Iraq always bargained on a war of attrition. Judging from the continuing revelations of terrorist intent, Iraq is the flypaper it was always said to be.

All the BBC can hope is that the fabled religious divides of Iraq will come to life in time to impersonate some horrible, borrible place from which nightmarish, nightmarish reality US troops can only hope to emerge intact, if they're lucky. Sigh...- it's all been said before, yet the Beeb, with its unexcelled egotism, thinks it's very clever, still:

'The violence continued as a senior Shia figure demanded a greater security role for the Badr Brigades militia, accused by its critics of vigilante attacks on Sunni Arabs...

Before the US-led invasion in Spring 2003 the brigades waged a guerrilla war in southern Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein's government.'

See, civil war etc etc etc blah, 'right all the long' utter bullshit.

Meanwhile, an attempt at perspective, here.