Somehow they let a relatively positive story from Iraq get through.

Gradually, ever so imperceptibly, the ground is beginning to shift.

The legions of American soldiers who not so long ago erected checkpoints and roared across the capital, guns pointed out of their Humvees, have diminished.

In their place, Iraqi officers are manning checkpoints and swooping down on suspected criminal gangs. Led by their American counterparts, Iraqi soldiers are combing through palm groves in search of weapons caches. One vanguard unit of the new Iraqi Army, known as the Iraqi Intervention Force, is allowed to patrol the streets without Americans.

More and more, the public face of security here is Iraqi.
...
The change is part of a calibrated American strategy to win confidence among ordinary Iraqis essentially by not being so visible.

That strategy is also evident in the actions of American civilian leaders here. The American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, has kept a conspicuously low profile. No longer are there near-daily news briefings in English by an American overseer or military officer. Instead there are addresses to the news media, often in a mixture of Arabic and English, by newly appointed Iraqi officials.

--New York Times

In your standard piece in say the Washington Post or the L.A. Times that retreat of US personnel from the spotlight would be portrayed as a failure; as proof that our strategy in Iraq hadn't worked. Never mind that it IS our strategy in Iraq.