…al Qaeda exploited what was already an inherent opposition to the war. Some mainstream media outlets had opposed the war from the start. The failure to immediately find weapons of mass destruction added to the media’s growing doubts. As long as al Qaeda detonated IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan, they could increase the perception of a quagmire. By getting the media to focus on the IED-of-the-day, al Qaeda was able to bury the good news (like the training of the Iraqi Army and reconstruction efforts), and was able to weather the loss of senior leaders like Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
The other factor going for them was the fact that members of the mainstream media generally were not sympathetic to the U.S. government. In the last year, media outlets revealed several intelligence programs