Peace in Iraq: Baghdad as a "Walled Fortress Town"

This may be one of the strangest pieces of journalism, hiding a significant story, I have ever read.

Today's New York Times has an article by Rod Nordland, "Iran’s Parliament Speaker Disparages Obama’s Video Overture". It's a sloppy, misleading report of a speech by Ali Larijani, misreading the significance. The Speaker's "pointed and abrasive tone", like that of Supreme Leader Khamenei last Friday, was not to reject discussions but to ensure that the US put no preconditions on the talks.

Nordland's distortion, however, is far from strange. The weirdness comes halfway down the article when he suddenly announces:

Meanwhile in Baghdad on Wednesday, Iraqi officials announced that work had begun to convert the city into a modern version of a walled fortress town.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad operations command of the Iraqi military, outlined plans to build four major entry points to the city, as well as 18 minor ones, and force all traffic through them to submit to systematic searches, using sophisticated X-ray and sonar equipment, and explosives detectors.

Some of the construction on the checkpoints has already begun, but General Atta did not say when it would be complete.

“Everyone who comes to Baghdad will be thoroughly searched so we can make sure the terrorist groups cannot come into the area,” he said.

I don't mind Times writers maintaining that Orwellian vision of Iraq as "violent semi-peace" --- heck, it even got Enduring America a mention amongst All the News Fit to Print --- but surely they can do better than to tuck the news of that violent semi-peace behind a story about a different country.