Sen. Joe Lieberman followed up on his Wall St. Journal op-ed with a solid performance on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. One of the most interesting exchanges occurred when Blitzer asked Lieberman how he could be so upbeat about Iraq in the face of stories like this one and this one. Lieberman responded:

LIEBERMAN: I saw those stories Wolf. Those are obviously totally unacceptable. I wanna make clear that I’m reporting progress that I saw in Iraq, not perfection, and in fact that’s why we have to stay there and can only draw down our troops as the Iraqi military is prepared to secure the country.

Because the media elite are already convinced that the war in Iraq is a disaster, there’s no such thing as progress as long as some difficulties persist or new ones arise. They are incapable of seeing the big picture or, God forbid, feeling optimistic about the goals the U.S. military is fighting so hard to achieve in Iraq. I’m glad someone as smart and articulate as Joe Lieberman can make the case that they should be more optimistic, but I’m not optimistic that they’ll listen.

Video here.