THE MOST BRILLIANT PUBLIC AFFAIRS STRATEGY EVER

Are you frustruated because you think the press is uninterested in good news from Iraq?

Do you think there is all kinds of progress being made in reconstruction, but that those stories aren't being reported? Or that, at the very least, there are large scale reconstruction efforts under way, and there's no way to tell how they're going because we never hear about them?

Do just despair of ever getting a robust picture of events in Iraq?

Not to worry, my friends.

Because the various US government agencies, including the military, involved in Iraqi reconstruction, working with the Iraqis to rebuild that country, slowly and painfully, but surely, have just hit on an absolutely surefire means of getting their work on the front page of the New York Times. (And you know once it's on the front page of the Times the rest of the media treat it, in true pack fashion as real news.)

Tell the Times it's classified, and they can only report under the strictest limitations -- so that the word "secret" can go into the headline. It's genius, I tell you! Genius!