Dueling Headlines - Iraq

Wow.

Check out the Washington Post's headline for the story about the as-yet unsuccessful effort to form an Iraqi government.

Effort to Form Iraqi Government Collapses

Now, see how the Times chose to sell the story.

Nascent Iraqi Assembly Adjourns Until Weekend Amid Bickering

Makes you wonder if they are talking about the same thing.

Strangely, the Times piece includes more detail about just how badly today's talks went.

Prominent assembly members said it appeared the deadline for a first draft of the constitution would have to pushed back six months beyond the original deadline of Aug. 15. The delay is allowed under the transitional law if it is proposed by the Iraqi president and if the assembly approves it by a majority vote by Aug. 1. Elections for a full-term government at the end of the year would then also have to be pushed back by half a year, slowing the ambitious American goal of planting democracy here in the heart of the Middle East.

"Realistically, I think it's very difficult," Haichem al-Hassani, a leading Sunni Arab politician and a top candidate for the post of defense minister, said of meeting the Aug. 15 deadline. "I think it's wishful thinking."

Ali al-Dabagh, a prominent member of the main Shiite bloc and an appointee of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, said that "time is too short."

The afternoon meeting of the assembly, which spiraled down into a shouting match, revealed how the bitter negotiations to form a government were poisoning the entire political process and fracturing the major political blocs, already divided along ethnic and sectarian lines.

President Bush says everything will be okay, though. Maybe that's where the Times headline took its cue.