Media Pessimistic About Iraq

That's got to be the "dog bites man" headline of the day, but sometimes even the obvious news is big news.

This comes from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which routinely surveys on the question, "Should America mind its own business internationally?"

Asked if efforts to establish democracy in Iraq will succeed, we find journalistics very pessimistic -- just one-third think the efforts will be successful. We the people, at least 56 percent of us -- think it will be successful, with only 37 percent think we'll fail. In contrast, 63% of the news media thinks we'll fail.

Also telling is that foreign service officials think worse of the prospects for democracy than journalists -- and that the military is more optimistic than even the general public. Seventy-one percent of foreign service officers think we'll fail, and 64 percent of the military thinks we'll succeed.