A CONSISTENT STORY

``What struck me was that it was not American soldiers running to the scene and doing things that would control the situation,'' he said. New Iraqi police officers, ``these folks in their blue shirts, were actually controlling the scene. This is actually becoming a working police force.''

That's particularly important to Falkner, a Pinellas County lawyer who's a long way from home these days. In Iraq, he's an Army Reserves colonel working with the U.S. civil affairs operation to bring democratic forms and functions to a former dictatorship.

What bothers him, he said Monday in a telephone interview from Baghdad, is that he thinks few Americans see what he sees through the daily violence of postwar Iraq.

``Why are we focusing on the vehicle that blew up outside the building when there are ... buildings being constructed, water lines being built, people's lives being improved?'' he asked.

A friend recently reminded me that newspapers' jobs are not to keep you informed...newspapers jobs are to sell newspapers.

And it seems that stories of progress don't sell newspapers...

Keep that in mind as you read the gloom and doom coverage.