England versus American view of the War

The first article I read is from the openDemocracy.net website. This London based site’s slogan is ‘free thinking for the world.’ Paul Rogers wrote an article on April 3 entitled The Iraqi Worldwind. This article was about how the United States was starting to become a little more optimistic towards the end of 2007 and even the beginning of 2008, even going as far as to say that we are starting to win. Now, however, the fighting between the Iraqi government and Shia militias along with the upsurge of violence in Baghdad has forced America back to reality.
The article goes on to state that, “The clearest evidence is the increasing casualty rate among both Iraqi civilians and American soldiers.” While the death rate of Iraqis for January was 540, the March total was 1,082. As far as American military loses, the number of troops killed in December was 23, but it was 38 troops in March.
Additionally, the point is made that, “The United States [is] responding to insurgent attacks by reconfiguring its equipment and tactics - including a much greater reliance on heavily-armored personnel carriers - while the insurgents learn to upgrade their own operations at least as quickly.” This shows that the opposition forces are, in fact, far from being defeated due to their innovativeness - so how can America speak of victory?
The article raps up by stating that America is, in general, trying to ignore “the realities of a dismal and inescapable conflict,” and that the result is “a mix of neglect and one-sidedness.” Because of the situation, however, something too big to ignore is likely to happen soon in either Afghanistan or Iraq.
The second article, U.S. Study Finds Progress in Iraq, but Fragile Security and Potential for Terror Attacks, was published in the New York Times. Although this article also stated that the current situation is extremely fragile and could go either way, it had a more optimistic and hopeful tone. For example, “Some Bush administration officials said that the report presented positive news, but they remained cautious about the future.” The report this sentence is referring to is the last major assessment made by US spy agencies last summer.
The article also included that “the new intelligence estimate cites slow but steady progress by Iraqi politicians on forging alliances between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq.” It tries to give some credibility to the hopefulness by saying that these statements have been made by American officials with all different opinions about what should be done concerning the war, including people who are in favor of immediate troop withdrawal.
The article followed all of its ‘things are looking up’ paragraphs with the ‘not as good alternative,’ paragraph, but it seems like they are included because the author felt obligated to briefly state a disclaimer since it’s a newspaper article, instead of fairly considering the options.
Of course the second article is bias toward the American side and the American goal because it’s an American paper. The first article, however, was written by a professor from England. His bias could go either way, depending on his opinion of America’s involvement in the war, but it is also likely to be less bias because of his outsider’s view. I tend to think that the first article is probably more truthful and closer to the reality of the situation.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/conflicts/global_conflicts/the_iraqi_whirlwind
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/washington/04intel.html?ref=middleeast