Although the BBC cannot restrain itself from stressing that Mideastern people place the blame for violence in Iraq on America, there are signs that perceptions are changing. Some choice quotes:

• The fact that Iraqi civilians are the main victims of the attacks is increasingly being stressed in reports, interviews and comments.
• Al Jazeera – often accused by the Americans of stirring anti-US feeling – has adopted less of an “Us and Them” approach. The militants are no longer referred to as the “resistance” but as gunmen or suicide bombers.
• Al-Jazeera’s main rival, the Dubai-based al-Arabiya, has also shown little sympathy for the bombers – a recent report, instead, painted a favourable picture of British soldiers patrolling Basra.
• A senior al-Arabiya correspondent in Iraq was lucky to survive a shooting last weekend claimed by one militant group, while a statement this week on an Islamist website purportedly from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group accused al-Jazeera of toeing the American line.
• In the wider Arab world, several newspapers have condemned the killings in Iraq – for example, the Saudi al-Jazeera – unconnected to the television channel – said that they were a “black mark on the whole Islamic world”.

Societal change is slow. The fact that we have made this much progress in this short of time is astounding.

Hold the course.