On balance

Despite the ongoing insurgent violence, the amenities of modern life are spreading to places in Iraq where they never previously existed. For instance, Iraq’s telephone subscriptions have increased five-fold since Saddam Hussein’s fall, according to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq index.

Automobile traffic, too, has increased dramatically — by five times, according to Brookings. The number of cars registered in Baghdad have more than doubled.

If this unprecedented consumer success seems newsworthy, most American newspapers judged it otherwise. A Lexis-Nexis search for “Iraq” and “traffic” in the last month turns up 57 entries, but only one actually mentions traffic in Iraq, and it reports not on Baghdad’s traffic but the lack thereof during an election. Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times reports seeing a traffic-free Jadriyah neighborhood in Baghdad on election day — an aberration, since local police and coalition forces mandate traffic restrictions during elections. Iraqi telephone connectivity went similarly underreported in the same period.