Monday, November 24, 2003

Alright.....this is what happends when you are an occupier:

As an Iranian-American I have heard the same arguments coming from whityhouse as is being given by the mullahs...I think mullah are Republican!!!!
The Iraqi Governing Council banned the station, one of the Arab world's largest, from working in Iraq for broadcasting an audiotape a week ago of a voice it said belonged to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). The U.S.-appointed council did not say how long the ban would be in effect.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher defended the ban. Boucher said the aim was to try "to avoid a situation where these media are used as a channel for incitement, for inflammatory statements, and for statements and actions that harm the security of the people who live and work in Baghdad, including Iraqi citizens themselves."
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New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also condemned the government action.
"Statements from Saddam Hussein and the former Iraqi regime are inherently newsworthy, and news organizations have a right to cover them," said the group's Middle East program coordinator, Joel Campagna.
"This is the latest in a string of heavy-handed actions by the Iraqi Governing Council and U.S. and coalition authorities toward the media that make us apprehensive about the future of press freedoms in Iraq."
The Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders called the closure a violation of freedom of the press and said it represented "methods ... that are contrary to the promises of setting up a democracy in Iraq."
"It's going down the wrong road," said Josh Friedman, head of international programs at Columbia University's School of Journalism in New York. "A free press is an essential component of democracy. If the free press doesn't always say what you want, that's something you have to live with."

In the audiotape purported to be Saddam, broadcast Nov. 16, the speaker told Iraqis that the "road of jihad (holy war) and resistance" is the only one to make the "armies of the unjust occupation leave our country." He criticized Iraqis who cooperate with coalition forces, calling them "stray dogs that walk alongside the caravan."

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