** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com/ **

June 23, 2005

Censorship

At long last, the culminating session of the World Tribunal on Iraq is
upon us. As a witness providing testimony, like the other witnesses I’m
being interviewed by many outlets. Today, one of them was by reporters
for one of the larger newspapers in Turkey, the Yeni Safak Newspaper.

I’ll leave the reporters nameless, for reasons you’ll soon see.

The newspaper has been translating various articles of mine into Turkish
and running them, particularly those concerning the most recent Fallujah
massacre. The report who was interviewing me today told me that the
former American consulate here, Eric Edelman, asked the Prime Minister
of Turkey to pressure his paper to not run so many of my stories.

“Why did he do this,” I asked him.

“Edelman said it was the wrong news,” he told me with a smile.

Turns out Edelman also asked that articles by Robert Fisk and Naomi
Klein not be run so often in Yeni Safak either.

He smiled at me while he watched the wheels turning in my head before I
smiled back and said, “That makes me very happy, it means I’m doing my
job as a journalist.”

We laughed heartily together at this, as did everyone else at the table.

Reminds me of the obtuse hate mails I sometimes receive-confirmation
that I am doing my job-they always make me smile.

So the American government is pressuring foreign countries to censor
their news. Aside from the fact that this act is the height of arrogance
by the United States, it makes it exceedingly clear why so many
Americans who rely on the corporate media for their news continue to be
so misinformed/un-informed about the goings on in Iraq. If the American
government is attempting to censor the news in foreign countries, you
can imagine what they are doing at home.

Because people like Edelman don’t want citizens of the United States to
know that events like the massacre of Fallujah or the atrocities in Abu
Ghraib are not isolated incidents.

People like Edelman don’t want people to know what one of my sources in
Baquba just told me today.

His email reads:

“Near the city of Buhrez, 5 kilometers south of Baquba, two Humvess of
American soldiers were destroyed recently. American and Iraqi soldiers
came to the city afterwards and cut all the phones, cut the water, cut
medicine from arriving in the city and told them that until the people
of the city bring the “terrorists” to them, the embargo will continue.”

The embargo has been in place now for one week now, and he continued:

“The Americans still won’t anyone or any medicines and supplies into
Buhrez, nor will they allow any people in or out. Even the Al-Sadr
followers who organized some help for the people in the city (water,
food, medicine) are not being allowed into the city. Even journalists
cannot enter to publish the news, and the situation there is so bad. The
Americans keep asking for the people in the city to bring them the
persons who were in charge of destroying the two Humvees on the other
side of the city, but of course the people in the city don’t know who
carried out the attack.”

People like Edelman don’t want people to know about the recent US
attacks in Al-Qa’im and Haditha either. Attacks that Iraqis are
describing as just as bad as the massacre of Fallujah.

On Haditha and Al-Qa’im, an Iraqi doctor sent me this email yesterday:

“Listen…we witnessed crimes in the west area of the country of what the
bastards did in Haditha and Al-Qa’im. It was a crime, a really big crime
we have witnessed and filmed in those places and recently also in
Fallujah. We need big help in the western area of the country. Our
doctors need urgent help there. Please, this is an URGENT humanitarian
request from the hospitals in the west of the country. We have big proof
on how the American troops destroyed one of our hospitals, how they
burned the whole store of medication of the west area of Iraq and how
they killed a patient in the ward…how they prevented us from helping the
people in al-Qa’im. This is an URGENT Humanitarian request. The
hospitals in the west of Iraq ask for urgent help…we are in a big
humanitarian medical disaster…”

People like Edelman don’t want the public to know that the same tactics
used in Fallujah by the US military-posting snipers around the city to
shoot anyone who moves, targeting ambulances, impeding medical care, or
the detaining of innocent civilians en masse.

After all, Fallujah is the model. Fallujah is our Guernica. And now,
Haditha, Al-Qa’im can be added to the list, with Baquba and Buhrez under
deconstruction.