"Bahjat was abducted after making three live broadcasts from the edge of her native city of Samarra on the day its golden-domed Shi’ite mosque was blown up, allegedly by Sunni terrorists.

Roadblocks prevented her from entering the city and her anxiety was obvious to everyone who saw her final report. Night was falling and tensions were high.

Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.

We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror."

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Originally posted by head:
I don't think "coalition" forces are there to promote free speech and democracy in the first place. As tragic as this reporter's death may have been, what about the many thousands of Iraqis that have died as a direct result of so called smart bombs, trigger happy mercenaries and troops, and years of an unjust embargo?
It's only a CNN type of logic that would dicate an ongoing American presence in the region to stop such attrocities from happening.
At the same time, I wonder how many Iraqi women have been raped and tortured by these coalition forces over the years? Somehow, this does not make the news. So much for the free speech gun-totting westerners bring to the lands they pillage and 'rebuid'.

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Rape and torture was Saddam's speciality. There is much media presence in Iraq, attempting to document everything the soldiers do. Abu Ghraib got quite a bit of attention.
Free speech does not guarantee everything will get reported, it guarantees that you have a right to research it and report it if you are so inclined.

I was against the Iraq war and extremely happy that Canada didn't enter the country.
But, I started this thread to discuss what the most moral and anti-oppresive course of action is now, considering the reality of the situation.

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The murder and torture of the woman above (which has barely made Canadian news btw) illustrates the types of people waiting in the wings if the US leaves.

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Waiting? Really? Seem busy to me. From the article:

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We may never know who killed Bahjat or why. But the manner of her death testifies to the breakdown of law, order and justice that she so bravely highlighted and illustrates the importance of a cause she espoused with passion.

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As for Canada's involvement in Iraq, aren't the bullets US soldiers are using in Iraq manufactured in part, in Montreal?

[ 08 May 2006: Message edited by: head ]

[ 08 May 2006: Message edited by: head ]

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CharlotteT: As much as a can't stand US foreign policy, I'll take a US soldier over a totalitarian religious death squad any day.

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Just like the US role in El Salvador in the 1980's and later in Columbia, the US is training these death squads. Get the US troops out and the death squad training will end.

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Today there are constant reports in the U.S. media on the growth of “sectarian violence” in Iraq, which has now come to dominate the military as well as political context of the occupation. Carefully sidestepped in most such reports, however, is the fact that these horrific developments are to a large extent the result of the active U.S. promotion of death squads in that country. In danger of losing the war for control of Iraq, Washington turned, as it had in Central America in the 1980s (and as it is in Colombia today), to developing terrorist armies that would do the job for it. On January 8, 2005, Newsweek cracked the story that the U.S. military was considering initiating the “Salvadoran Option” whereby the United States would train, arm, and finance Iraqi death squads, drawn principally from the Shiite and Kurdish militias: irregular military forces whose job would be to terrorize the Sunni population as a means of undermining the support for the insurgency. Soon after, the Wall Street Journal in its February 23, 2005, issue reported that the United States was already working at forming government-based paramilitary units or militias in Iraq that would carry out these objectives.

The single most important of these paramilitary units, consisting of thousands of troops, the Wall Street Journal declared, was the Special Police Commandos formed in September 2004 by General Adnan Thavit, uncle to Iraq’s interim interior minister and a former Baathist military intelligence officer. “This was a horse to back,” in the words of U.S. General David Petraeus, in charge of training Iraqi forces.

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Further,

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In its March 20, 2006, issue, Time magazine quoted U.S. authorities as declaring that the Police Commandos and other government-linked, Shiite-dominated, U.S.-trained militias are now “out of control,” kidnapping, torturing, executing, and committing mass atrocities in ways that give pause even to the U.S. occupying authorities.

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Meanwhile, the new puppets (simply a rotation of the same OLD puppets), after taking several months to finally decide who gets to play the role of prime minister, are now wrangling and wrestling over the ‘major’ ministries and which political party should receive what ministry. The reason behind this is that as soon as a minister is named from, say, SCIRI, that minister brings in ‘his people’ to key positions- his relatives, his friends and cronies, and most importantly- his personal militia. As soon as Al-Maliki was made prime minister, he announced that armed militias would be made a part of the Iraqi army (which can only mean the Badrists and Sadr’s goons).

... So while Iraqis are dying by the hundreds, with corpses turning up everywhere (last week they found a dead man in the open area in front of my cousins daughters school), the Iraqi puppets are taking their time trying to decide who gets to do the most stealing and in which ministry. Embezzlement, after all, is not to be taken lightly- one must give it the proper amount of thought and debate- even if the country is coming unhinged.

Baghdad Burning

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"With up to 13,802 Iraqi civilian deaths to date, Canadians will now be providing one of the most basic necessities for the US occupation forces in Iraq: bullets. The Canadian company SNC Technologies Inc. (SNC TEC) is now part of a multinational consortium of small-caliber ammunition producers whose purpose is to supply between 300 million -500 million more bullets to occupation forces per year, and potentially for at least five years"

More here:Canadian bullets

[ 08 May 2006: Message edited by: head ]

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When I telephoned Huda Al-Jazairy in Baghdad exactly two years ago, a bomb had fallen 12 feet from her house, shattering windows in surrounding houses. At that time, she told me, "There is no security. All the people are afraid to go out." But that situation, she said recently, was “so much better than now.” Many Iraqis say, "All our life we have lived as Shia, Sunni, Christian, Turkmen – together. Never ever were the Iraqi people thinking of each other as Shia or Sunni. This is now the main thing they think about."

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Apparently the videotape purportedy showing Bahjat's murder seems to actually be footage taken of an execution of a Nepalese woman in 2004. The earlier tape conforms in all relevant details to the description of the execution as described in the original article, and screen shots from a copy of the video puportedly of Bahjat's murder that surfaced on the Internet show that the 2004 video and the new one are the same.

Apparently:

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Bahjat was killed in Iraq while covering the sectarian violence in Sammara following the bombing of the Shiite Askariya Shrine in Samarra. Her body and the body of her cameraman were found Feb 23, just outside Samarra. At that time, local police captain Laith Muhammad told the Associated Press that the bodies were "bullet-riddled" and mentioned nothing about being beheaded. Images taken of her body after it was found also showed no signs of being beheaded.

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I will not provide a linked article to my source of this information, as the article at Ogrish.com where I found this out has graphic images of the execution from the new video as compared to the one from 2004 -- they are identical. If anyone is really interested they can PM and I will provide a source.

[ 11 May 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Also, there is material created by disgruntled US troops, etc.

More than 100,000 dead and not a tear shed but one dead reporter and some guy has all kinds of bile to spill over it and the press has all kinds of space to give him.