One good development may emerge from the silly, obnoxiously covered sex scandal surrounding the South Carolina governor and his Argentine paramour: As his home-state newspaper publishes his embarrassing PG-13 puppy-love confessions via email, some may wonder why The State sat on these aching, treacly bon-mots since December.

And, as TPM Muckraker points out today, they may wonder why the rest of the American media - so sure about terror threats and emerging crises in every two-bit hamlet across the globe - had been so snookered so long. Gov. Mark Sanford was... somewhere with his feet up, writing. He was... bare-ass hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He was... oops... soul-kissing away his career.

Maybe the media will level with us about their tendency to prop up those in power long after the rest of the country has pinned a clothespin on its collective nose over obvious shortfalls and exposed dastardy. And maybe it'll chat about its tendency to champion specious causes for motives unclear... or, even sinister.

Maybe the American information business will tell us why for so long it lent its credulous blessing to the Iraq War, to the misfortune that cooler heads have called the worst strategic disaster in this country's history.

Over the past five days, a spike in violence sent the casualty toll in Iraq to over 150 civilians killed and another 400 wounded. We are told this is to be expected, that the violence will "uptick" as planned U.S. troop pullouts from Iraqi cities continues; the deadline for this drawdown, actually, is the end of the week.

It also serves to prove that the media's fondness for the troop surge two years ago was, as expected, misplaced. Seems at least a few Americans actually figured out that the insurgents - being able to blend in at will with the population at large - would disarm until fewer boots were on the ground to oppose them, then start fighting anew. And there were other, more grim reasons for the "downtick":

The levels of violence did drop from the horrific heights of 2006 and 2007 - again, partly because the American-assisted ethnic cleansing had been so successful. (In much the same way, there was a significant drop in Nazi violence against Jews in, say, Poland - after the Nazis had killed most of the Jews in Poland.) But the violence in Iraq never went away; the conquered land remained one of the most dangerous places on earth, and very few of the 4 million refugees felt safe enough to return home. (And in many cases, their "ethnically cleansed" homes were no longer available to them.) And of course, the million dead are still dead - and the millions more maimed, broken, ruined, grieved and traumatized are still suffering.

One of the reasons - actually a constantly repeated chant from both Democrat and Republican - that the Iraq War can't end immediately is because American withdrawal would spark a bloodbath, as warring factions battle mano-a-mano for their ruined country. And there's the matter of oil, now parsed out, post-Soviet Oligarch-style, to foreign petroleum giants.

Those considerations are keeping 50,000 American troops in-country, even after the "draw-down". They will be headquartered in bases - some built so poorly by ex-VP Dick Cheney's cronies that they're more deadly than patrols in the boonies. For now, and maybe evermore, our occupying army will ride out of its forts at any sign of serious trouble, guidons flying, to the rescue.

But even though, apparently, not much is changing, or will... Even though the status quo, war-wise, will continue in Iraq for the foreseeable future... Even though they don't have to... wouldn't it be a good idea for the media to finally level with us?

Why did they support this war - so gung ho? Why didn't they check out the WMD "evidence" themselves? They had months to do so - at least weeks. Why didn't they tell the country, up front, that this bloodbath was thoroughly unnecessary?

Why did they help lead us to this cliff... so Bush and everyone else pushing this disaster could shove us over the edge? Why?