http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0608/07/ltm.03.html HARRIS: We're going to get back to the bad news in a second. But I can't end this without asking you -- and I don't ask this -- I don't ask the question because, you know, I want to set you up for some kind of an attack that journalists don't report the good news in Baghdad -- but if there is any good news to report, you've been there so many times now, what is it?
GHOSH: Well, I've been here for three-and-a-half years, Tony. I've been covering the story since before the war started. And I would desperately love to have good news to report. Unfortunately, for ordinary Iraqis, there's very little of it about. And perhaps the worst thing of it all, human beings will tolerate almost any atrocity as long as there's hope for things getting better, Tony. But what I sense now among Iraqis that I speak to is a loss of hope, a feeling, a sinking feeling that things are about to get worse.
When I ask people here if there are any good news stories, they look at my sadly, and those who have a sense of humor will smile at me. But there are no really good stories to tell here.
HARRIS: Boy. We're not talking -- not a school that's working, a construction project that's working? We can't find anything that says, OK, we can...
GHOSH: Well, if you look -- well, sometimes you think that there is a piece of good news, and you look at it closely and you find that it is not. A couple of months ago, Abu Musab Zarqawi was killed, and we all thought that was a turning point. It turns out it's not.
Al Qaeda is just as deadly as it used to be. You reported a little earlier in your bulletin another suicide bomber. Suicide bombers are back in the daily headlines here. Two months ago a new government was formed in this country, supposedly a national unity golf. And we thought that would be good news, and that would a turning point. Unfortunately, that's not how it's turned out.
The government is bickering. The ministers fight amongst themselves. They are opposed to each other; even though they are now under the same tent, Shiites and Sunni lawmakers are constantly at each other's throat. And they have compromised the ability of this government to crack down on the militias that are the source of most of the trouble here.
HARRIS: More U.S. troops on the ground, from 7,200 to 14,000, will that make a difference?
GHOSH: That will make a difference. The difficulty is, how long will these troops stay here? Every time the U.S. military comes into the city there is a lull, there is a silence, because the bad guys know there's nothing to be gained in standing up and fighting with the U.S. military. That's the shortest route to death.
So typically what happens when the U.S. troops come into town is that the bad guys melt away and they disappear for a few weeks. They go some place elsewhere there aren't so many American soldiers and they start fighting there. And when the soldiers here stand down or go back to the bases, the bad guys turn up again. And then once again, you have a daily drum roll of death, and car bombs, and suicide bombings and kidnappings and so on.
HARRIS: You do a wonderful job of sort of chronicling the news, bad as it is. Bobby Ghosh, senior correspondent for "Time" magazine, an amazing read, the cover story in this week's edition of the magazine.
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