Month: May 2004

The editor and entire staff of a Pentagon-created, US funded Iraqi newspaper has quit in disgust saying they’re sick of American interference in their choice of subject matter. They say they’re starting their own newspaper, called Al-Sabah Al-Jedid (The New Morning).

On a front-page editorial of the Al-Sabah newspaper, editor-in-chief Ismail Zayer said he and his staff were “celebrating the end of a nightmare we have suffered from for months. . . . We want independence. They (the Americans) refuse.”
[…]
“We had a project to create a free media in Iraq,” Zayer said of the founding of Al-Sabah. “They are trying to control us. We are being suffocated.”

Zayer accused Harris of interfering in the paper’s workings, including trying to stop some of its advertising and speaking to reporters about articles.

Among the ads that he said Harris tried to prevent was one from a new political organization called the Iraqi Republican Group. The ad ran in Monday’s issue — the last put together by Zayer’s staff.

It complained of the “griefs of occupation” and called on Iraqi elite to rally “to preserve our nation from destruction.”

Zayer said he was told by Harris that the ad was “too political.”

The Iraqis are so lucky the Americans invaded so they could impart their superior Western values like Freedom of Speech and democracy and all.

As a supplement to today’s Amir Butler article, “The Lesson of the ANZACs,” here’s Philip Knightley‘s account of Keith Murdoch’s role in the Gallipoli affair.

What with all the bludgeoning of war opponents over the oil-for-food scandal, I think it’s time for those of us on the antiwar Right to come clean: we love the U.N. Always have, always will. Yep, everyone here at Antiwar.com just adores global government, internationalism, multilateralism, etc. To repeat: we love love love love love love love the U.N.!

It takes Victor David “VD” Hanson four paragraphs of mild angst over the Abu Ghraib atrocities to segue into his apologia. The rationalizations for American torture of Iraqi prisoners are in five bulleted points. I’ll sum them up so you don’t have to read it.

• There’s an investigation going on! Nothing’s proven.
• Bush and Kimmitt are mad about it and boy, are those very few soldiers who did it in trouble.
• Worse things happened in history!
• The media is blowing this out of proportion, especially the Arab Press, those Osama-lovers!
• Those guys naked in human pyramids with bags on their heads were probably terrorists who deserved it!

Conclusion: People are just picking on America for this because they’re mean hypocrites and don’t understand America’s moral superiority! Don’t forget the rest of the world, especially Arabs, are much worse than us, so go nag on them.

This morning, I was having my coffee and reading my local newspaper when it dawned on me that something was indeed missing from this noble rag. Well, on the front page and in the main section there was the story of the hostage who managed to escape his captors in Iraq. That was good news. An article about how local military families are waiting for their loved ones to come home. That was nice. Next was an article about how American troops in Afghanistan killed four “suspected” terrorists. Well, mixed feelings on that one depending on whether they really were terrorists, or merely some guys going to the post office. There was a story about Arnie’s nice speech on the Holocaust in Jerusalem. I could have lived with that being on a less-prominent page. Same with the news that ear infections are rampant. A few articles about local politicians who were tossing their hats into the ring for dogcatcher, ho-humm, and there was a bunch of feel-good stories about kids’ achievements in school; nice, but not the stuff that front pages are made of.

I’ll give you three guesses as to what was missing, and bet you will get it on the first one!

Right! Not a single mention anywhere about the eleven soldiers who died yesterday in Iraq!! Not in the main section, not in the local section, not in the home section, the money section, the sports section! Nowhere! Not surprising though since it seems even the major networks and online news pages are ignoring it, with just a few exceptions.

I want to add that my hometown is a military town chock full of families of troops overseas and veterans of several wars. Pensacola is the “Cradle of Naval Aviation,” as well as being next door to the vast Eglin AFB. What happens to our troops is of great concern to all in this city. And yet, the Pensacola New Journal does not even find the deaths of eleven soldiers worthy of note in their entire newspaper! I suspect there is more than just a bit of politics going on here. And it is surprising in light of the results of a current WEAR TV online poll which showed that the majority of the area’s population, 73%, disagreed strongly with the preemption of Ted Koppel’s roll call of the dead last week at WEAR, our Sinclair-owned local station.

Well, now I know why they call them “local rags.” That’s all the paper is good for. The problem is, many of our national newspapers have become “rags” as well. I won’t even start ranting about the broadcast media which are just as bad. Apparently, if you want the news, both good and bad, you have to go in search of it yourself. I didn’t originally intend this to be a solicitation for donations but — well, dammit, yes, I guess I do!! Antiwar.com has consistently brought us all the news including that which otherwise would be buried on the back pages or tossed in some newsroom’s trash can, news from every corner of the global community. I am proud to be one of the volunteers here, proud to be helping in my very small way to keep the information flowing for you. Please help as well by contributing to keep us up and running.

To add to this post:
One of our readers, Pete in NC, wrote to me that try as he might, he couldn’t locate a contact link at the Pensacola News Journal. I had to call the newspaper to find out where it was myself, but here it is for those who have something to say to them: Customer Contact

Thank you, Pete!

This is too funny:

Myers: Former Saddam General Not in Charge in Falluja

Gen. Jasim Mohamed Saleh, a former general in Saddam Hussein’s army, is not in charge in the volatile Iraqi city of Falluja and is still being vetted for a possible peacekeeping role, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday.

“The reporting to date has been … very, very inaccurate,” Gen. Richard B. Myers told Fox News Sunday. “We’ve gotten a lot of help from tribal sheiks and other folks.”

“… The reports of that one general … Gen. Saleh that you’ve just mentioned … and there’s another general as well … They are being vetted as we speak by the Iraqi minister of defense and the Iraqi provisional authorities.”

“They have not been vetted, they have not been put in charge,” Myers said.

However, ” … we think we are very close to having Iraqis help achieve our objectives in Falluja,” he said.

Saleh is a former general who once belonged to the elite Republican Guard of ex-ruler Saddam Hussein’s army.

You can almost smell the burning rubber as they slam on the brakes.