Deathtrap Iraq

The claim by Saddam Hussein that he has been tortured in custody is on the front pages of many Arab newspapers. But it is unclear whether his latest efforts to portray himself as a victim of the Americans is playing that well in the Middle East. There is certainly widespread fascination with his trial. Arabs have the opportunity to follow it in the minutest detail if they wish - it is being...

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lost his diplomatic cool with a reporter on Wednesday, calling him an "overgrown schoolboy" in a show of anger at questions over his part in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. The normally unruffled Annan responded calmly at an end-of-year news conference to several questions on the $64 billion program, which he said had sometimes...

WASHINGTON – U.S. military officials in Iraq were fully aware that a Pentagon contractor regularly paid Iraqi newspapers to publish positive stories about the war, and made it clear that none of the stories should be traced to the United States, according to several current and former employees of Lincoln Group, the Washington-based contractor. In contrast to assertions by military officials in...

If you read conservative blogs, you're familiar with the argument that the mainstream media buries the good news in Iraq because of their liberal bias and hatred of the president. Liberals, meanwhile, contend the press isn't showing the real horrors of the war, and suggest that a focus on insignificant "good news" would be misleading the public. (Recently, the New Republic's Jason Zengerle mocked...

On a U.S. tour, award-winning journalist Robert Fisk spoke about his life work as a veteran journalist reporting about the Middle East. Fisk is the Middle East correspondent for the British newspaper, The Independent. For almost 30 years he has been a journalist and with over 28 foreign press awards he is one of the most decorated journalists in the world. With a sunburned face Fisk has lived in...

Militarily, there was never any doubt that the US-led Coalition would prevail over Saddam's forces in March and April 2003. However, there was much more at stake than a mere demonstration of military might. The Coalition had told the world that it was "liberating" the Iraqi people; this had to be publicly proven. When Victoria Clarke, US assistant secretary of state for public affairs, issued her...

DUBAI – Democracy as perceived by the US should not be imposed on Iraq at this point of time, Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, the jet-setting prince of Saudi Arabia said yesterday. A vocal supporter of the US, Al Waleed bin Talal said that it was too early to let media rule in Iraq. "Iraq is a complicated country which has never experienced stability. Right now, it would be right to let the country...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday that news media organizations were focusing too much on casualties and mistakes by the military in Iraq and were failing to provide a full picture of the progress toward stabilizing the country. "We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has accused the United States of "operating a cynical campaign of double standards" in Iraq after newspaper reports that a sophisticated propaganda offensive is being waged whereby the US army is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish articles written by American troops posing as journalists. According to the Los Angeles Times, articles...

Nov. 30, 2005 - A British government crackdown on government leaks may have backfired by calling world attention to an ultrasensitive secret memo whose alleged contents have embarrassed President George W. Bush and strained relations between London and Washington. The document allegedly recounts a threat last year by Bush to bomb the head office of the Arabic TV news channel Al-Jazeera. U.K...