“While the Administration indulges in happy talk, Iraq is getting worse and worse. Just today, another Iraqi journalist was killed by American troops,” writes Christopher Allbritton, former AP reporter and Back to Iraq blogger.
The second I don’t know much about, as I just heard about it. Details haven’t started coming in yet.
I think the Americans have gotten a lot more trigger-happy and twitchy after the campaign of car bombs and other violence. […..]
News flash: Iraq is a disaster. I’ve been back one day, and the airport road was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We had to go around a fire-fight between mujahideen and Americans while Iraqi forces sat in the shade of date palms on the side of the road, their rifles resting across their laps. My driver pointed to a group of men in a white pickup next to me. “They are mujahideen,” he said. “They are watching the Americans.” Indeed, they were, and so intently that they paid no attention to me in the car next to them. We detoured around two possible car bombs that had been cordoned off while Iraqis cautiously approached. … More
Reporters Without Borders has called for information about the arrest of a documentary-maker and of his cameraman, of whom there has been no news since early May, and the murder of a local TV producer shot dead at the wheel of his car on 28 June.
Cyrus Kar, a US national of Iranian origin and his Iranian cameraman Farshid Faraji, were both arrested in Iraq on 2 May 2005 while making a documentary entitled, “In search of Darius the Great”.
Ahmed Wael Al Bacri, producer on local al-Charkiya television died at the wheel of his car while he was returning to his home in Baghdad.
“We ask for light to be shed on the circumstances of the arrest of documentary-maker Cyrus Kar and his cameraman Farshid Faraji. The US and Iraqi authorities should quickly investigate to find out the reasons for their detention,” the organisation said, adding, “We are particularly worried Faraji about whom we have had no news since his arrest on 2 May.
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Tiny snipped at the end of this AP story: