If you've missed it, the narrative was unveiled by the US military mid-month and various outlets have already rushed to do their part to re-sell the illegal war by weighing in early and often.
The narrative declares, "Yip-ee! Violence is down!" 33 is the announced US service member death toll thus far and some reports are already going on about how it's the lowest since March of 2006 (31 was the toll then -- when they started those reports, this month's toll stood at 31 and it may yet rise further). If you think roughly one life a day is fair payment for Bully Boy's bloody and illegal war, you too can rejoice.
If you realize that the illegal war based on lies should have never started, you're aware that at least 33 Americans died this month who not only should have never died, should have never been stationed in Iraq to begin with.
On October 4th, Just Foreign Policy listed 1,080,903. Now? 1,096,367 is their estimate for the number of Iraqis killed since the start of the illegal war. AP already telegraphed their desire to run with official figures from the Iraqi government (which show a decrease). In the past, AFP and McClatchy Newspapers have been able to call that nonsense out; however, in September McClatchy elected not to their now monthly figure on Iraqi deaths. They still did the insulting US "combat deaths" -- insulting for a number of reasons but on the most basic, the US military has three classifications: combat, non-combat and "under investigation." McClatchy has portrayed only the first two categories in this monthly feature.
If early versions (test driven by AP among others) are any indication, the refugee crisis (well over 4 million displaced Iraqis -- internally and externally) will not get any attention although the crisis was clearly created by the illegal war.
One also wonders how fatalities between the Turkish military and the PKK will be addressed (or even if they will be addressed)?
If September's big story was Blackwater, the key story of October were US military air strikes that killed civilians -- with the US admitting to a few while using "under investigation" to cover others. That too is falling out of the early accounts so we're not hopeful to see it explored in the end of the month (published first day of the month) stories.
What we're expecting to see is the most simplistic coverage possible that strips away all reality and conveys the scripted message that the illegal war has hit an upswing.
In case you missed it, a large bulk of the mainstream media has enlisted to re-sell the illegal war. So it's time for them to pull down another box of Iraqi War Helper and offer up easy lies, easy numbers and avoid examination of anything. All these years later, that may be the most depressing thing after the fact that the illegal war continues to drag on.