That does not mean, we have seen, that they know what to say about it.
The TV ONE report had little story to go with its pictures. One shot was from one of those increasingly common, frown-worthy "impromptu" snaps from a cell phone camera, catching the moment of explosion perfectly in frame before the obligatory shaking. In the age of digital media and "social networking waves", we can never be too cynical about where such footage comes from. Not when there is a war being waged.
Of course, we haven't heard much of Iraq, lately - more about Afghanistan and Pakistan, which together form the three active theatres for US troops and their allies encircling Iran - which coincidentally had a very precise "bomb attack" on its border armed forces recently.
Wikipedia is a grossly unreliable source for such events, but I notice the battle of narrative there shifts back and forth between a bomb attack and a suicide attack. The difference, in all such explosions, is significant.
So after months of "relative quiet" where the "Surge" and "Handover" are supposed to have mostly established order, and the focus has been on the colonising army's withdrawal, the press have lost the thread of what story they are supposed to tell.
The TV ONE reporter didn't know who perpetrated the crime, and as usual, who was killed, although government offices were targeted. He didn't know "why". Almost meekly, he used the word "insurgents", just once, but enough to attribute the blame. The word that filled in his report nicely because the story there is so obvious, bedded into the years and years of narrative they've already laid down.
And fially, the tell-tale of a reporter with no clue what to say, we see him walking down a nice Baghdad market street that might have been the Riviera, exclaiming at what a "contradiction" the massive explosion made.
A contradiction? Or rather, is it the consequence of a chain of events, a story, the press has not been following.
So who perpetrated the criminal blast? The simple and plain fact is the media, and we the general public, don't know. As we almost always don't know, but are led to believe otherwise by the story that we have become used to hearing, wrapped around a pile of bodies after a blast. When there is no wrap-around press statement issued - usually from the White House or Pentagon, those authorities that the Western media respects - the news product ends up like last night: Bland, factless almost, and directionless; pointless, no matter how they tried to dress it up.
Which is almost any story from a war zone should be.
It is no lie that the first casualty of war is truth. Stories are crucial, and those with power seize them to their end. And the whole world has been subject to a creeping "Long War" since 9/11.
*
Back to the Baghdad blast, there are still questions that can be raised from it, and the tips of some are observable in this Reuters report.
First, from my observation of the war, the scale of this blast points to high-grade explosives. The Bali bombs, for instance, were very sophisticated military-grade devices, resulting in 200 victims. Detonations of such scale are rare because of skill in the construction and access to resources. Anything over fifty dead, even twenty, raises a flag for me.
Second, the methods were car/van. Iraqi government says two suicide drivers. Other reports say just a car and van.
As above, this is crucial. It does not take a suicidal martyr to make a car or truck bomb. There is substantial evidence from within Iraq that Coalition black ops teams used that very means to intimidate and eliminate local opposition and fuel "ethnic" or tribal tensions, Just as they are operating in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan now. Making the world safer. That is what Black ops does.
Compounding this, over the period of Iraq's recolonisation there have been reports of Iraqi Government forces and "Wolf" militias doing this very same thing, after being trained by American forces. Like any good colonial government, they have learnt that this is an acceptable use of power in a time of strife.
This is where the key question in the story comes in, the one that is nearly always lost in the global media's story, because if you look too close you can find a much clearer motive.
So much has been explained away in Iraq as "ethnic conflict", and "Baath party hold-outs" where that story does not fit - not to mention the Amazing Digital Existence of "Al Qaeda in Iraq's" Al-Zarqawi. It is notable that Iraq expert Robert Fisk absolutely rejects any historical basis to Iraq's supposed Shi-Sunni ethnic conflict.
Nonetheless, for so long when people die, they are designated as Sunni and Shi'ite. Yet that is so often just part of a story - where they scholars? Were they scholars associated by a desire to organise a popular movement? Were they all killed in similar fashion, execution style? Was one a particularly respected local leader?
All stories, questions lost, under the ethnic blanket.
The fact these latest attacks were so close to the government district suggests they were made by a group with access to not only skills and resources, but contacts in (if not part of) the centre of power, as well as some dissatisfaction with some evolving political trend or upcoming decision. None of that suggests "fringe wacky-backy insurgents" to me.
Besides whatever laws are before the occupied nation's parliament, the most significant development I know of is the upcoming withdrawal of US from Baghdad, then from Iraq the next year. The attack may be an early strike by forces looking to assert authority once the country is no longer under direct threat of foreign force. Or, with things so "peaceful" and the American-built walls coming down across the city, it may be an attack designed to "convince" the American forces to stay.
Like good journalists, we'll not prejudge, but wait to see if further attacks occur, and what stories are spun to explain them.
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