As a cable network, Fox News served as head cheerleader for former President George W. Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war and in its flawed execution. Now, nearly a decade later with the final troops withdrawing from the country, the right-wing network saw fit to give the story only 10 minutes of air-time in prime-time.

The Associated Press' David Bauder says, “nowhere was the difference between the cable news networks on starker display” than “the night the last American combat brigade left Iraq.”

Bauder writes:

MSNBC devoted its entire prime-time footprint to the story, with Richard Engel riding with the troops in a specially equipped vehicle and host Rachel Maddow based in Baghdad. Keith Olbermann anchored the coverage from a New York studio.

Fox News Channel devoted just under 10 minutes to the story, much of it during Shepard Smith's 7 p.m. newscast. The network spent 45 minutes discussing the potential construction of an Islamic cultural center near ground zero, while that story wasn't mentioned on MSNBC at all. CNN, meanwhile, spent an hour on each story.

For the folks at Fox News, Muslim bashing over the proposed Islamic community center being planned in lower Manhattan was far more important than the end of combat missions in Iraq.

As Media Matters' Ari Rabin-Havt said in the AP piece:

Ari Rabin-Havt of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America said he believed the Iraq story received little coverage on the opinionated shows because it did not reflect poorly on the president – unlike the Islamic center controversy.

“This was a big story about President Obama keeping one of his big campaign promises and it was virtually ignored,” Rabin-Havt said. “It wasn't a campaign announcement. It was a conflict the nation has been embroiled in for seven years.”