Who to Believe?

Nick Gillespie earlier declared,

On a very basic level, it’s virtually impossible to know whether the occupation is going well or horribly wrong. This is above and beyond the question of whether we should be there in the first place.

Similarly,

...domestic reality is up for grabs: The candidates want you to buy very different depictions of America. Is the economy still in the shitter? (And was it ever there, really, especially given levels of joblessness that were always below what used to be considered inevitable "frictional unemployment"?) Did President Bush’s tax cuts (and/or unrestrained government spending) jump start the growth we may or may not be experiencing? Exactly how many jobs have been lost due to offshore outsourcing and how many to automation and other irrefutable signs of what used to be called progress?

Now via Instapundit, Eric M. Johnson, who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Marine Corps reservist, suggests the American media are giving a misleading picture. There's a surprise.