Man, Laura Ingraham really stirred up a hornets nest with her wingnutty condescension about "reporting from the balcony in Baghdad" on last week's Today Show appearance, didn't she?

On Reliable Sources this morning, CBS News reporter Lara Logan, reporting from Iraq, gave Howard Kurtz an earful.  Crooks and Liars has the video, and it is worth a watch and then some.

KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.

LOGAN: Well, who says things aren't falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn't see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.

What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn't see on our screens? I mean, we've reported on reconstruction stories over and over again…I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we're not reflecting the true picture here. That's totally unfair and it's really unfounded.

...Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them? You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage.  And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked.  I mean, security dominates every single think that happens in this country....So how is it that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?  (Transcript via Crooks and Liars, from Reliable Sources.)

Atrios has some comments on this issue at Eschaton -- and I encourage you to read them, because these talking points are going to be coming up again and again from the right as things get more and more tense in Iraq.  As did Peter Daou on MSNBC yesterday.  And Aravosis makes a great catch regarding ABC and the "internets" on Americablog.

L'il Debbie hits the issue of reporting from Iraq and about Iraq in her WaPo column today, with a longer piece as a link-through to the opinion page.  I'm still reading it, but I'd love your thoughts.