Story of the Day: Iraqi Journalists Targeted Saddam-Style

As the Taliban regain control of Afghanistan, democracy is not exactly on the march in Iraq either. In addition to one of the worse spates of sectarian violence and U.S. troop casualties the war has seen, the state of free speech and freedom of the press in Iraq is now regressing to Saddam-era oppression.

From today's New York Times editorial:

New laws in Iraq criminalize speech that ridicules the government or its officials, and any journalist who “publicly insults” the government or public officials can be subject to up to seven years in prison. Some of the language is resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s own penal code. It is hard enough for journalists to operate on the ever-expanding battlefields of Iraq. That is true for foreign journalists, who often have all the gear and protections of powerful outside media. But it is even harder for Iraqi journalists, who now face not only the dangers on the street but the threat of defamation laws as well.

Is this what our troops are fighting for (776 of whom were wounded in September, the fourth-highest monthly total since the war began)? They pay, as Bush says, "the ultimate sacrifice," so Iraqi journalists can be shot, tortured or jailed for giving an opinion or reporting the truth?

More than 130 journalists or other employees of news outlets have been killed in this war, most of them Iraqis. Some died accidentally, of course. But too many working journalists have clearly been targeted, some even brutally tortured to death, precisely because of what they were publishing. On one day last August, a newspaper editor and a prominent columnist were both shot to death by gunmen in different sections of Baghdad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been tracking an increasing number of journalists whose critical voices are being muted or silenced in other ways. In the last year, about a dozen Iraqi journalists have been formally accused of offending public officials — a charge that can bring a fine or prison term or both. In one case, a high school teacher was arrested after he wrote in a small paper that the two party leaders in his area were acting like pharaohs.

Other journalists were arrested for writing about a top official’s dispute over a telephone bill. A woman reporter was charged with defamation when she quoted a protester comparing today’s police with those of Saddam Hussein.

Three journalists for a small newspaper in the southern city of Kut could go to prison for 10 years and pay heavy fines for a number of articles on local corruption. One article compared Iraqi’s present judicial system with that of the Hussein regime; another reprinted Washington Post charges of corruption in the Iraqi police force.

Considering the trajectory of this war's prosecution and the concerns of its stewards, this should be of no surprise to anyone. It's as predictable as, say, not being "greeted as liberators" or having the Taliban reconstitute in Afghanistan after diverting our resources to Iraq. Bush refuses to promote democracy on our own soil. He has taken our Constitution and applied it liberally to his backside. (Funny how these are the same folks who get bent out of shape over flag burning. Symbols are sacrosanct; laws are expendable.)

To believe Bush was ever concerned about bringing democracy to Iraq is tantamount to an endless faith in the Easter bunny. The climate under which Iraqi journalists now find themselves is not so different than what this administration would dream of imposing on our own press.

Protecting a Freedom to Insult
New York Times Editorial