The Guardian judges the right-wing Iraq pundits. Christopher Hitchens is but one:

He taunted the anti-war marchers and "half the newspaper columnists in England" for their forecasts of doom, confidently claiming that all was well in liberated Baghdad, which had not "become a Stalingrad, with house-to-house resistance". The Arab streets had not risen, "to spit in the face of Zionism and imperialism". He thrilled to the news that the US and its allies had made "a clean sweep of Arab de-Stalinisation".

Anti-war demonstrators who claimed that "there would be heaps and heaps of slaughtered Iraqi civilians, and massive casualties among coalition troops" had been wrong. "Soon it will become evident to the naked eye that the city is substantially undamaged. It will also become obvious that its inhabitants waited patiently through what must have been very stressful days and nights, trusting and being able to tell that the targeting was careful and the intentions honourable."

The moral of the story: "Journalism and propoganda should be separate."

[link via Sean Paul at Agonist who is doing a great job of reporting current events in Iraq despite the paucity of official news reports.]