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There was a cluster of stories about Iraq. ABC led from Baghdad with the news that the violent death rate for civilians declined last month to less than 900 compared with more than 1,700 in August. Miguel Marquez' explanation made note of a lull in terrorist bombings and the onset of the sacred month of Ramadan: "More Iraqis are staying home." In Baghdad, where September's civilian death toll was 543, Marquez credited the efforts of the US military surge, which has "walled off and shut down large areas."
All three networks had their Pentagon correspondent cover an Iraq angle. CBS' David Martin was on hand as Gen Peter Pace left his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pace declared he was "sad to leave" even as Martin characterized his mood as "bitter." Inside the Pentagon, Martin reported, Pace is blamed by his colleagues for his failure to stand up to Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary of Defense. Martin called Pace "another casualty of the war."
On ABC, Jonathan Karl (at the tail of the Marquez videostream) covered the lighter-than-normal US military death toll in September, the least lethal month of the last twelve: one resistance force, the Mahdi Army, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has suspended its military operations for six months; a second, al-Qaeda has had its operations "disrupted for now," Karl's unnamed administration sources told him. Karl quoted from a note written by abu-Osama al-Tunisi, an alleged al-Qaeda leader killed in an air raid: "I have been surrounded. We are so desperate for your help."
NBC decided to preview House hearings into Blackwater USA's bodyguard operation in Iraq for the State Department. Jim Miklaszewski reported that the civilian death toll for last month's Baghdad shootout has now risen to 17. He called it "no isolated incident" since Blackwater personnel have engaged in almost 200 firefights in less than three years. By reputation they have "very quick trigger fingers and act like cowboys."
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