New York Times reporter Tim Arango took to Reddit to answer questions about his experience covering Iraq for the last two years. He accused the Obama administration of ignoring the stories coming out of the country. “[W]hen officials spoke about what was happening there, they were often ignorant of the reality,” Arango wrote. “They did not want to see what was really happening because it conflicted with their narrative that they left Iraq in reasonably good shape. In 2012, as violence was escalating, I wrote a story, citing U.N. statistics, that showed how civilian deaths from attacks were rising. Tony Blinken, who was then Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s national security guy, pushed back, even wrote a letter to the editor saying that violence was near historic lows. That was not true. Even after Falluja fell to [ISIL] at the end of last year, the administration would push back on stories about [then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki’s sectarian tendencies, saying they didn’t see it that way. So there was a concerted effort by the administration to not acknowledge the obvious until it became so apparent – with the fall of Mosul – that Iraq was collapsing.” In other words, Obama’s failures are obvious even to the Leftmedia. More…