Media Workers Against the War

The veteran investigative reporter reveals in this week’s New Yorker that there has “been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning” by the US, and that “the bombing plan has had its most positive reception from the newly elected government of Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown”.

The article starts here: In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said, “The President has made it clear that the United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution with respect to Iran. The State Department is working diligently along with the international community to address our broad range of concerns.” (The White House declined to comment.)

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued. But there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, “The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.”)

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

In a speech at the United Nations last week, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was defiant. He referred to America as an “aggressor” state, and said, “How can the incompetents who cannot even manage and control themselves rule humanity and arrange its affairs? Unfortunately, they have put themselves in the position of God.” (The day before, at Columbia, he suggested that the facts of the Holocaust still needed to be determined.)

“A lot depends on how stupid the Iranians will be,” Brzezinski told me. “Will they cool off Ahmadinejad and tone down their language?” The Bush Administration, by charging that Iran was interfering in Iraq, was aiming “to paint it as ‘We’re responding to what is an intolerable situation,’ ” Brzezinski said. “This time, unlike the attack in Iraq, we’re going to play the victim. The name of our game seems to be to get the Iranians to overplay their hand.”

General David Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, in his report to Congress in September, buttressed the Administration’s case against Iran. “None of us, earlier this year, appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about which we and Iraq’s leaders all now have greater concern,” he said. Iran, Petraeus said, was fighting “a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.”

Iran has had a presence in Iraq for decades; the extent and the purpose of its current activities there are in dispute, however. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, when the Sunni-dominated Baath Party brutally oppressed the majority Shiites, Iran supported them. Many in the present Iraqi Shiite leadership, including prominent members of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, spent years in exile in Iran; last week, at the Council on Foreign Relations, Maliki said, according to the Washington Post, that Iraq’s relations with the Iranians had “improved to the point that they are not interfering in our internal affairs.” Iran is so entrenched in Iraqi Shiite circles that any “proxy war” could be as much through the Iraqi state as against it. The crux of the Bush Administration’s strategic dilemma is that its decision to back a Shiite-led government after the fall of Saddam has empowered Iran, and made it impossible to exclude Iran from the Iraqi political scene.

Vali Nasr, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, who is an expert on Iran and Shiism, told me, “Between 2003 and 2006, the Iranians thought they were closest to the United States on the issue of Iraq.” The Iraqi Shia religious leadership encouraged Shiites to avoid confrontation with American soldiers and to participate in elections—believing that a one-man, one-vote election process could only result in a Shia-dominated government. Initially, the insurgency was mainly Sunni, especially Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Nasr told me that Iran’s policy since 2003 has been to provide funding, arms, and aid to several Shiite factions—including some in Maliki’s coalition. The problem, Nasr said, is that “once you put the arms on the ground you cannot control how they’re used later.”

In the Shiite view, the White House “only looks at Iran’s ties to Iraq in terms of security,” Nasr said. “Last year, over one million Iranians travelled to Iraq on pilgrimages, and there is more than a billion dollars a year in trading between the two countries. But the Americans act as if every Iranian inside Iraq were there to import weapons.”

Many of those who support the President’s policy argue that Iran poses an imminent threat. In a recent essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz depicted President Ahmadinejad as a revolutionary, “like Hitler . . . whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it . . . with a new order dominated by Iran. . . . [T]he plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force.” Podhoretz concluded, “I pray with all my heart” that President Bush “will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel.” Podhoretz recently told politico.com that he had met with the President for about forty-five minutes to urge him to take military action against Iran, and believed that “Bush is going to hit” Iran before leaving office. (Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, is a strong backer of Rudolph Giuliani’s Presidential campaign, and his son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, is a senior adviser to President Bush on national security.)

In early August, Army Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Times about an increase in attacks involving explosively formed penetrators, a type of lethal bomb that discharges a semi-molten copper slug that can rip through the armor of Humvees. The Times reported that U.S. intelligence and technical analyses indicated that Shiite militias had obtained the bombs from Iran. Odierno said that Iranians had been “surging support” over the past three or four months.

Questions remain, however, about the provenance of weapons in Iraq, especially given the rampant black market in arms. David Kay, a former C.I.A. adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations, told me that his inspection team was astonished, in the aftermath of both Iraq wars, by “the huge amounts of arms” it found circulating among civilians and military personnel throughout the country. He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded American cluster bombs. Arms had also been supplied years ago by the Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq who had been persecuted by the Baath Party.

“I thought Petraeus went way beyond what Iran is doing inside Iraq today,” Kay said. “When the White House started its anti-Iran campaign, six months ago, I thought it was all craziness. Now it does look like there is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in response to American pressure and American threats—more a ‘shot across the bow’ sort of thing, to let Washington know that it was not going to get away with its threats so freely. Iran is not giving the Iraqis the good stuff—the anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down American planes and its advanced anti-tank weapons.”

Another element of the Administration’s case against Iran is the presence of Iranian agents in Iraq. General Petraeus, testifying before Congress, said that a commando faction of the Revolutionary Guards was seeking to turn its allies inside Iraq into a “Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests.” In August, Army Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, told reporters in Baghdad that his troops were tracking some fifty Iranian men sent by the Revolutionary Guards who were training Shiite insurgents south of Baghdad. “We know they’re here and we target them as well,” he said.

Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me that “there are a lot of Iranians at any time inside Iraq, including those doing intelligence work and those doing humanitarian missions. It would be prudent for the Administration to produce more evidence of direct military training—or produce fighters captured in Iraq who had been trained in Iran.” He added, “It will be important for the Iraqi government to be able to state that they were unaware of this activity”; otherwise, given the intense relationship between the Iraqi Shiite leadership and Tehran, the Iranians could say that “they had been asked by the Iraqi government to train these people.” (In late August, American troops raided a Baghdad hotel and arrested a group of Iranians. They were a delegation from Iran’s energy ministry, and had been invited to Iraq by the Maliki government; they were later released.)

“If you want to attack, you have to prepare the groundwork, and you have to be prepared to show the evidence,” Clawson said. Adding to the complexity, he said, is a question that seems almost counterintuitive: “What is the attitude of Iraq going to be if we hit Iran? Such an attack could put a strain on the Iraqi government.”

A senior European diplomat, who works closely with American intelligence, told me that there is evidence that Iran has been making extensive preparation for an American bombing attack. “We know that the Iranians are strengthening their air-defense capabilities,” he said, “and we believe they will react asymmetrically—hitting targets in Europe and in Latin America.” There is also specific intelligence suggesting that Iran will be aided in these attacks by Hezbollah. “Hezbollah is capable, and they can do it,” the diplomat said.

In interviews with current and former officials, there were repeated complaints about the paucity of reliable information. A former high-level C.I.A. official said that the intelligence about who is doing what inside Iran “is so thin that nobody even wants his name on it. This is the problem.”

The difficulty of determining who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq can be seen in Basra, in the Shiite south, where British forces had earlier presided over a relatively secure area. Over the course of this year, however, the region became increasingly ungovernable, and by fall the British had retreated to fixed bases. A European official who has access to current intelligence told me that “there is a firm belief inside the American and U.K. intelligence community that Iran is supporting many of the groups in southern Iraq that are responsible for the deaths of British and American soldiers. Weapons and money are getting in from Iran. They have been able to penetrate many groups”—primarily the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias.

A June, 2007, report by the International Crisis Group found, however, that Basra’s renewed instability was mainly the result of “the systematic abuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias.” The report added that leading Iraqi politicians and officials “routinely invoke the threat of outside interference”—from bordering Iran—“to justify their behavior or evade responsibility for their failures.”

Earlier this year, before the surge in U.S. troops, the American command in Baghdad changed what had been a confrontational policy in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland (and the base of the Baathist regime), and began working with the Sunni tribes, including some tied to the insurgency. Tribal leaders are now getting combat support as well as money, intelligence, and arms, ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Empowering Sunni forces may undermine efforts toward national reconciliation, however. Already, tens of thousands of Shiites have fled Anbar Province, many to Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, while Sunnis have been forced from their homes in Shiite communities. Vali Nasr, of Tufts, called the internal displacement of communities in Iraq a form of “ethnic cleansing.”

“The American policy of supporting the Sunnis in western Iraq is making the Shia leadership very nervous,” Nasr said. “The White House makes it seem as if the Shia were afraid only of Al Qaeda—but they are afraid of the Sunni tribesmen we are arming. The Shia attitude is ‘So what if you’re getting rid of Al Qaeda?’ The problem of Sunni resistance is still there. The Americans believe they can distinguish between good and bad insurgents, but the Shia don’t share that distinction. For the Shia, they are all one adversary.”

Nasr went on, “The United States is trying to fight on all sides—Sunni and Shia—and be friends with all sides.” In the Shiite view, “It’s clear that the United States cannot bring security to Iraq, because it is not doing everything necessary to bring stability. If they did, they would talk to anybody to achieve it—even Iran and Syria,” Nasr said. (Such engagement was a major recommendation of the Iraq Study Group.) “America cannot bring stability in Iraq by fighting Iran in Iraq.”

The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities.

“Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes,” the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. “The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.” There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. “We’ve got to get a path in and a path out,” the former official said.

A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called “short, sharp incursions” by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, “Cheney is devoted to this, no question.”

A limited bombing attack of this sort “only makes sense if the intelligence is good,” the consultant said. If the targets are not clearly defined, the bombing “will start as limited, but then there will be an ‘escalation special.’ Planners will say that we have to deal with Hezbollah here and Syria there. The goal will be to hit the cue ball one time and have all the balls go in the pocket. But add-ons are always there in strike planning.”

The surgical-strike plan has been shared with some of America’s allies, who have had mixed reactions to it. Israel’s military and political leaders were alarmed, believing, the consultant said, that it didn’t sufficiently target Iran’s nuclear facilities. The White House has been reassuring the Israeli government, the former senior official told me, that the more limited target list would still serve the goal of counter-proliferation by decapitating the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, who are believed to have direct control over the nuclear-research program. “Our theory is that if we do the attacks as planned it will accomplish two things,” the former senior official said.

An Israeli official said, “Our main focus has been the Iranian nuclear facilities, not because other things aren’t important. We’ve worked on missile technology and terrorism, but we see the Iranian nuclear issue as one that cuts across everything.” Iran, he added, does not need to develop an actual warhead to be a threat. “Our problems begin when they learn and master the nuclear fuel cycle and when they have the nuclear materials,” he said. There was, for example, the possibility of a “dirty bomb,” or of Iran’s passing materials to terrorist groups. “There is still time for diplomacy to have an impact, but not a lot,” the Israeli official said. “We believe the technological timetable is moving faster than the diplomatic timetable. And if diplomacy doesn’t work, as they say, all options are on the table.”

The bombing plan has had its most positive reception from the newly elected government of Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. A senior European official told me, “The British perception is that the Iranians are not making the progress they want to see in their nuclear-enrichment processing. All the intelligence community agree that Iran is providing critical assistance, training, and technology to a surprising number of terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, through Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine, too.”

There were four possible responses to this Iranian activity, the European official said: to do nothing (“There would be no retaliation to the Iranians for their attacks; this would be sending the wrong signal”); to publicize the Iranian actions (“There is one great difficulty with this option—the widespread lack of faith in American intelligence assessments”); to attack the Iranians operating inside Iraq (“We’ve been taking action since last December, and it does have an effect”); or, finally, to attack inside Iran.

The European official continued, “A major air strike against Iran could well lead to a rallying around the flag there, but a very careful targeting of terrorist training camps might not.” His view, he said, was that “once the Iranians get a bloody nose they rethink things.” For example, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Larijani, two of Iran’s most influential political figures, “might go to the Supreme Leader and say, ‘The hard-line policies have got us into this mess. We must change our approach for the sake of the regime.’ ”

A retired American four-star general with close ties to the British military told me that there was another reason for Britain’s interest—shame over the failure of the Royal Navy to protect the sailors and Royal Marines who were seized by Iran on March 23rd, in the Persian Gulf. “The professional guys are saying that British honor is at stake, and if there’s another event like that in the water off Iran the British will hit back,” he said.

The revised bombing plan “could work—if it’s in response to an Iranian attack,” the retired four-star general said. “The British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, ‘Let’s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.’ It’s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks.” There is, he added, “a widespread belief in London that Tony Blair’s government was sold a bill of goods by the White House in the buildup to the war against Iraq. So if somebody comes into Gordon Brown’s office and says, ‘We have this intelligence from America,’ Brown will ask, ‘Where did it come from? Have we verified it?’ The burden of proof is high.”

The French government shares the Administration’s sense of urgency about Iran’s nuclear program, and believes that Iran will be able to produce a warhead within two years. France’s newly elected President, Nicolas Sarkozy, created a stir in late August when he warned that Iran could be attacked if it did not halt is nuclear program. Nonetheless, France has indicated to the White House that it has doubts about a limited strike, the former senior intelligence official told me. Many in the French government have concluded that the Bush Administration has exaggerated the extent of Iranian meddling inside Iraq; they believe, according to a European diplomat, that “the American problems in Iraq are due to their own mistakes, and now the Americans are trying to show some teeth. An American bombing will show only that the Bush Administration has its own agenda toward Iran.”

A European intelligence official made a similar point. “If you attack Iran,” he told me, “and do not label it as being against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will strengthen the regime, and help to make the Islamic air in the Middle East thicker.”

Ahmadinejad, in his speech at the United Nations, said that Iran considered the dispute over its nuclear program “closed.” Iran would deal with it only through the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, and had decided to “disregard unlawful and political impositions of the arrogant powers.” He added, in a press conference after the speech, “the decisions of the United States and France are not important.”

The director general of the I.A.E.A., Mohamed ElBaradei, has for years been in an often bitter public dispute with the Bush Administration; the agency’s most recent report found that Iran was far less proficient in enriching uranium than expected. A diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based, said, “The Iranians are years away from making a bomb, as ElBaradei has said all along. Running three thousand centrifuges does not make a bomb.” The diplomat added, referring to hawks in the Bush Administration, “They don’t like ElBaradei, because they are in a state of denial. And now their negotiating policy has failed, and Iran is still enriching uranium and still making progress.”

The diplomat expressed the bitterness that has marked the I.A.E.A.’s dealings with the Bush Administration since the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “The White House’s claims were all a pack of lies, and Mohamed is dismissive of those lies,” the diplomat said.

Hans Blix, a former head of the I.A.E.A., questioned the Bush Administration’s commitment to diplomacy. “There are important cards that Washington could play; instead, they have three aircraft carriers sitting in the Persian Gulf,” he said. Speaking of Iran’s role in Iraq, Blix added, “My impression is that the United States has been trying to push up the accusations against Iran as a basis for a possible attack—as an excuse for jumping on them.”

The Iranian leadership is feeling the pressure. In the press conference after his U.N. speech, Ahmadinejad was asked about a possible attack. “They want to hurt us,” he said, “but, with the will of God, they won’t be able to do it.” According to a former State Department adviser on Iran, the Iranians complained, in diplomatic meetings in Baghdad with Ambassador Crocker, about a refusal by the Bush Administration to take advantage of their knowledge of the Iraqi political scene. The former adviser said, “They’ve been trying to convey to the United States that ‘We can help you in Iraq. Nobody knows Iraq better than us.’ ” Instead, the Iranians are preparing for an American attack.

The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can stand up to an American attack. “The Guards are claiming that they can infiltrate American security,” the adviser said. “They are bragging that they have spray-painted an American warship—to signal the Americans that they can get close to them.” (I was told by the former senior intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bull’s-eye while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.)

“Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, ‘Uncle Sam is here! We’d better stand down’? ” the former senior intelligence official said. “The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.”

Another recent incident, in Afghanistan, reflects the tension over intelligence. In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130 Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border. But there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the C-130 had come from Iran—especially since SA-7s are available through black-market arms dealers.

Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: “The Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incident—in fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran.” The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.

The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence “was worried” about passing the information along. “The Brits don’t trust the Iranians,” the retired general said, “but they also don’t trust Bush and Cheney.”

The UK government seeks to boost pro-British sentiment in the Middle East through news management at a government-funded TV news agency. Bruce Whitehead told the Journalist about his experience of working there:

I was in Riyadh reporting for British Satellite News, a government-funded news agency. We were covering an official visit by Bill Rammell, the minister for lifelong learning. Saudi Arabia is keen to educate and train its own teenagers in order to reduce the country’s dependence on imported labour and skills. The visit was designed to establish potentially lucrative educational ties between the two countries.

In line with UK policy Bill Rammell asked the Saudi ministers about democratic and social reform. Sipping mint tea in the sumptuous majlis, or parliament, the minister’s first attempt to tackle the Saudis on human rights was ignored. Instead, the Saudi ministers emphasised their country’s need for welders. The minister took the stonewalling well, seamlessly praising his hosts for limited reforms in local elections, while coaxing them again: when would women get equal opportunity? And when would the Saudi people get the vote?

At this point, the UK Ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who’d been whispering in the minister’s ear throughout, intervened. The Saudi translator, he said, wasn’t up to the mark, and had made several mistakes. The ambassador, a fluent Arabic speaker, announced that he would take over as the minister’s personal translator, whispering in his ear. Fine for the minister, but impossible for anyone else to hear.

I protested quietly that I wouldn’t know what the Saudis were saying, but I was ignored. Later I was told the Saudis had explained that women were being allowed equal employment and education, but would remain segregated for their own good. They would not be allowed into politics or given the vote.

Nor would anyone else get the vote: the Saudi people had shown that they were perfectly happy with the House of Saud in charge, so why on earth would the House of Saud want to impose democracy?

If this was what Bill Rammell heard he was unable to debate it. The meeting was over, we were off to film at the medina and the minister was off to inspect oilwells in Eastern Province.

Returning to London, I wrote my report, including what I had been able to glean from the exchanges at the Saudi parliament. The report was doctored by the editor, Mike Nolan, to remove the Saudi government’s views on democracy and women’s rights.

We now know, what I did not know then, that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles is the man who warned the UK government that the Saudis would end security co-operation if the police investigation into allegations of £60 million worth of hospitality for the Saudis in connection with British Aerospace’s “Al Yamamah” arms deal went ahead. The inquiry of course was duly dropped.

For me as a journalist the Foreign Office’s editorial influence at BSN was making it more and more difficult to do my job. I reported remarks by Dennis McNamara, the UN’s highly respected adviser on displacement, denouncing the west for flooding Africa with arms. Mike Nolan called me in for a little chat. Did I realise who our client was? Why did I persist in writing critical reports?

I tried to argue that our job was not to report professionally, so that the clients - in my view overseas broadcasters, and not the FCO - would trust us. Mike Nolan told me the UN adviser’s words were “too close to the bone” and they were removed from my report._I no longer work at BSN, but its biased and flawed material is being used by hundreds of TV stations in the Middle East and Asia. All this is funded by the Foreign and Diplomatic Service, courtesy of the British taxpayer, to the tune of some £3 million per year.

Another tale that ran into trouble was when I reported perfectly friendly remarks by Tony Blair about Islam, the war on terror and other contentious issues, made on the record to a world audience. Even these were removed by BSN on FCO orders. If the Foreign Office can censor its own Prime Minister to feed distorted news to the Arab world, how can Britain be trusted there?

Mike Nolan told the Journalist: “Unlike Bruce, I have no intention of breaking my confidentiality on what went on between the two of us. I completely refute his version of events. “It is wrong to suggest I doctor scripts. Bruce was certainly not alone in having his material subbed. When material was reduced I nearly always took the time to explain why. Bruce’s claim he ran into trouble when he reported friendly remarks made by PM Blair about Islam is untrue. I am not censored by the Foreign Office; I did not censor Bruce. BSN prides itself on providing accurate and balanced information on news and developments in the UK.”

You wouldn’t know it from the British media, but last week a highly respected survey organisation reported that up to 1.2 million Iraqis have died violently because of the conflict, making the 2006 Lancet research that reported 650,000 dead look conservative by comparison.

The survey, by Opinion Research Business (ORB), asked a representative sample of 1,461 Iraqis how many members of their household had died as a result of the conflict. The survey showed that over 1.2 million Iraqis had died, with the death rate now exceeding the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Almost one in two households in Baghdad have lost a family member.

ORB is about as mainstream as you can get. It has been commissioned by the Tory Party, by the BBC (most recently by Newsnight), and its work is cited frequently in the British media.

When an ORB opinion poll in Iraq earlier this year provided statistics that were supportive of the occupation, it was splashed all over the Sunday Times (here and here) and other newspapers internationally.

So far only the Los Angeles Times has carried this story, although this weekend’s Observer mentioned it prominently within another article.

Why hasn’t the story been picked up elsewhere? If this isn’t double standards, what is?

Media Workers Against the War contacted ORB and spoke to managing director Johnny Heald. Mr Heald said that, although the press release had been on ORB’s website since Friday, the results of the survey will be formally launched on Tuesday (September 18).

He said that ORB has no ideological position: after publishing previous poll results on Iraq it was accused of being right-wing, but now he expects that left-wing media will pick up on the new research.

Mr Heald said that an objection to ORB’s latest findings might be that, with so many deaths, where are all the bodies? He said the organsation’s interviewers in Iraq, led by the respected pollster Munqeth Daghir, say people don’t report many murders for fear of reprisal. Four ORB interviews have themselves been murdered, he said.

Mr Heald also pointed out that the survey showed 48% had died from gunshot wounds, which is significant because car bombs and aerial bombardments usually make the news – gunshots rarely get into the headlines.

This figure tallies with the Lancet research, which found that 56% of violent deaths were a result of gunfire.

Ten-point guide to what the increase of US troops in Iraq has meant in practice:

1. 70% of Iraqis believe security is now worse than before the surge.
2. There has been no reduction in civilian deaths.
3. Food rations have been cut by 35%.
4. There are fewer doctors and nurses.
5. There has been a sharp rise in Iraqis fleeing Iraq.
   
6. The US is partitioning Baghdad along sectarian lines.
7. The US is arming future militias.
8. The country is awash with US-supplied weapons.
9. The UN says Iraq’s crisis is worse than Darfur.
10. The situation is a bloody stalemate.

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj has been on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay for more than 230 days. Clive Stafford Smith tells his story in the Press Gazette.

The week began with a letter from a Guantánamo Bay officer suggesting that I might have smuggled some Speedo swimming trunks and “Under Armour briefs” to my client, British resident Shaker Aamer. Shaker was apparently caught wearing both “contraband” items in his prison cell.

I was unsure whether to be amused or annoyed. These are serious allegations, yet the notion that I was going to slip a prisoner some Speedos was pretty silly. So I composed a reply that contained every euphemism for underwear that I could conjure up, and relished reminding the officer that I am more concerned with legal briefs than the Under Armour variety.

Surely it would be clear even to the Guantánamo authorities that their own guards must have supplied the offending lingerie. My internet research disclosed that Under Armour does a line of “tactical” underwear for the military. They’re camouflaged, presumably in case a soldier gets caught with his trousers down somewhere in the jungle. Meanwhile, the only pool of water where Shaker could employ his Speedos would be his lavatory, putting me in mind of the hackneyed admonition at the public baths: “We don’t swim in your toilet, so please don’t pee in our pool.”

I had imagined spending the week on something rather more pressing. Sami al-Haj, the Al Jazeera cameraman held in Guantánamo, has been on a hungerstrike for more than 230 days, more than three times as long as the IRA strikers in 1980. Sami was seized when on assignment to Afghanistan, apparently because the US thought he had filmed Al Jazeera’s famous Bin Laden interview. As has so often been the case of late, the US was wrong (though name me a journalist who would turn down a Bin Laden scoop).

Now Sami is being force-fed with a 110cm tube shoved down his nose. The military is doing it in a way that is calculated to be painful – or, to borrow General Craddock’s offensive euphemism, to make it “inconvenient” for Sami and others to continue their peaceful protest. Instead of leaving the tube in – which would be bad enough – they insert it and pull it out again with each feeding. I tried experimenting with this on myself one time and it is excruciating.

Sami began his strike when his patience finally ran out on 7 January of this year, the fifth anniversary of his incarceration without trial. I have just received the unclassified portions of my notes from a recent visit – every word he tells me has to go through the censors, so there is a lot I cannot pass on.

I am very worried about him. His memory has been going, along with his grip on the English language. He has developed a paranoid fear that he will be the next prisoner to die at the island gulag. “My prison number is 3, 4, 5,” he told me, his face serious. “First, in June 2006, there were three prisoners who died. Then, this May, there was a fourth to die. Three, four… five, I am afraid I am going to be the fifth.”

I administered a psychological screening test on Sami when I saw him. I cannot write what he said as (for reasons that are beyond me) that part was not cleared for public consumption. I’ve consulted with various mental health professionals about him. One doctor reminded me not to refer to Sami as paranoid: “His fears of mistreatment at the hands of the Americans are not, unfortunately, paranoid. They are very worrying, but he has more than five years’ experience proving that they are very real.”

Doctors from the US, UK and Middle East all agree that there are urgent concerns about Sami’s health, and that he needs independent medical intervention. He won’t get it, no matter what I do. Sami has already told me what I have to say to his seven-year-old son, Mohammed, if he does not make it out of his prison cell alive. I hope I never have to deliver the message.

When BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was being held hostage by the Palestinian Army of Islam, Sami issued a plea asking them to let his fellow journalist go without conditions. It was broadcast by Sami’s Al Jazeera employers, in the hope that the kidnappers would be watching the Arabic news channel. I wonder how to contact Alan Johnston now, to see if he can return the favour.

The western media has been too slow to come to Sami’s aid. I am not sure why.
Clive Stafford Smith is the legal director of Reprieve, a UK charity which provides investigation and legal representation to prisoners denied justice by powerful governments across the world, from death row to Guantánamo Bay. He has just published a book about his work, Bad Men – Guantánamo Bay and the Secret Prisons (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Contact him at info@reprieve.org.uk, or Reprieve, PO Box 52742, London EC4P 4WS, or telephone 020 7353 4640

NATO forces say an air strike in Helmand targeted Taliban leaders, but locals say the bombs killed hundreds of innocent civilians, The Institute of War and Peace Reporting reports.

It was 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon in the small town of Bughni, located in the Baghran district of Helmand province. Hundreds of people has gathered for the traditional weekly market, or “mela,” where locals trade and haggle over everything from cows to carpets.

Suddenly the bombs came, causing panic and reportedly killing upwards of 200 civilians and injuring many more. If the reports are confirmed, it would be the highest single casualty figure in Afghanistan this year.

That is the residents’ version of events in Bughni on 2 August. Eyewitnesses tell gruesome tales of headless bodies piled high waiting for identification. Many say they lost children, brothers, fathers.

“The bombing by foreign forces started when all the villagers were gathered for the traditional mela, where they buy all their requirements for the week,” said Sultan Mohammad, a local man. “This mela is close to a holy shrine. At three in the afternoon, the planes came and dropped bombs on the people, killing more than 200 and injuring 150.

“There were children and old people there. How are we at fault? Why are we being killed?”

But Combined Joint Task Force-82, the US-led Coalition force which carried out the bombing, told a very different story.

“Coalition forces conducted a precision air strike against two notorious Taliban commanders conducting a leadership meeting in a remote area of the Baghran district,” read the press release. “Coalition forces employed precision guided munitions… after ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area.”

The gulf between the two accounts is a telling reflection of the situation in Helmand, where local people and the foreign forces often seem to be inhabit alternate universes.

One problem is lack of local knowledge. While there were reports that the Taliban were carrying out public executions of people they deemed spies that Thursday afternoon, it seems certain that the bulk of the people gathered there had come for the weekly market.

In the absence of normal shops, most communities mount a weekly trade fair, bringing handicrafts, livestock, farm produce and clothing along to barter or sell. In Bughni, market day falls on a Thursday, the start of Afghanistan’s weekend.

NATO has made much of the fact that those assembled were all, or mostly, fighting-age males. But the absence of women in public places is simply a fact of life in the Pashtun-dominated south, particularly in areas under Taliban control. Women are closeted at home while their men go out to do the shopping.

There were, however, children and old men among the dead and injured, as photographs taken at the hospital in the provincial capital Lashgar Gah attest.

But amid the barrage of accusations and counterclaims, the truth remains elusive.

As an obviously frustrated Defense Ministry spokesman told reporters, “They do not carry ID cards to show who they are. While they are fighting they are Taliban, but when they are killed they are suddenly civilians.”

Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, chief of police in Helmand province, confirmed that some two dozen injured had been brought to the Bost Hospital in Lashkar Gah.

“I can’t say whether they are civilians or not,” he told IWPR. “As for those who were killed, they might have been civilians or they might have been Taliban.”

The injured were taken to various hospitals in the area. Some were transferred to Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold about 100 kilometers from Bughni. Others were taken to Kandahar, about 150 kilometers away, and more still went to Lashkar Gah, over 200 kilometers from the scene of the bombing.

“Many died on the way,” said Abdul Karim, a resident of Baghran. “One of my sons is in Bost Hospital. I don’t think he will survive. Two other sons are in Musa Qala. Two of my cousins were killed, and two more were injured.”

There were so many dead, he added, that the survivors were just stacking the bodies.

“We piled about 50 bodies up for relatives to come and identify,” he said. “Most were missing their heads or other body parts. We hoped their relatives would know them by their clothes, tattoos, shoes or something.”

The scenes he described were horrific. “It was a day of blackness,” he said. “Almost everyone had lost someone. People did not know where their family members were. I saw people just sitting on the ground, staring at nothing. There was mourning everywhere.” “We grew tired of collecting the dead,” said Hafizullah, another resident. “In the hospital in Musa Qala, there was not a single empty bed.”

One young man in hospital in Lashkar Gah was so badly injured he could barely speak. Through burned and swollen lips, he said, “We were at the mela and suddenly the bombs came. They brought us here because there was no space in Musa Qala.”

Gul Wali, 18, was also among the injured. “Bombs were falling from the sky into the trees, and I saw pieces of flesh and bone,” he said. “These were our villagers, they were innocent people. They had just come to the mela to buy food for their families. Instead, they ended up looking for their loved ones among piles of bodies.”

According to Major Chris Belcher, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-82, the strike was an unqualified success.

“This operation shows that there is no safe haven for insurgents,” he said, in an official press release.

An officer with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed that the strike had been justified.

“We are confident that we hit a high-level meeting of the Taliban,” he told IWPR.

Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry also issued a press release claiming victory.

“At 4:23 in the afternoon of 12th Asad [2 August], terrorists who spread panic among the people wanted to hang six civilians on charges of collaboration with the government. This happened at Bagh-e-Nahi, near the Shah Ibrahim Baba shrine.

“In that meeting were Mullah Dadullah Mansoor, Mullah Abdurahim Akhund, Mullah Bulbul Kajaki, and other high-ranking Taleban warlords as well as some foreign terrorists. They were targeted from the air. According to initial reports, dozens of terrorists were killed or injured.”

Afghan forces, the US-led Coalition and ISAF all claim that several Taliban commanders were among the dead. One of the main targets was Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, brother of commander Mullah Dadullah Akhund, who was killed by foreign forces in May. Others listed among the slain were Mullah Rahim Akhund, the Taleban “governor” of Helmand, his brother Mullah Majid, and Mullah Bulbul Kajaki.

Mansoor Dadullah has, however, given several media interviews since he was declared dead, and insists that the others are also alive and well. According to one report, he claimed to be drinking tea with Mullah Bulbul and Mullah Majid as he spoke to reporters.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf echoed Dadullah’s statements in a telephone interview with IWPR.

“There was not a single Talib in that area,” he said. “There was no hanging, and no big meeting. The Taliban are not so stupid as to gather in such a vulnerable place. It was a Thursday mela, and all of those killed and injured were civilians.”

Despite this, locals said there had been executions under way. “Armed Taliban were hanging three people on charges of spying for foreign forces,” said one man, Khan Mohammad. “Then the planes came, so I ran away.”

Another man, who had come to Lashkar Gah with an injured relative, also told of the executions. Dressed in long traditional Afghan clothes, with eyes red from rage and grief, he was only too eager to open his heart to a reporter.

“We went to watch the execution at the mela place. The Taliban were hanging people. There were seven spies to be hanged, but after the first two, the bombing started.”

It is almost impossible to unravel the contradictory claims of the various sides in the conflict.

ISAF, with the British in the lead, generally get most of the blame when air strikes kill civilians. Its spokespersons insist that ISAF does all it can to minimize civilian casualties. But the peacekeeping force has little control over the American troops in the area.

Coalition troops and US Special Forces, which are not under NATO command, are mentoring the Afghan National Army during what are termed “kinetic” operations in Helmand. Time after time, the air strikes attributed to ISAF have been carried out by American forces.

Over the past few months, in Sarwan Qala, Hyderabad and now Baghran, hundreds of people have been killed or injured in American-led air strikes. Precise figures are hard to obtain, not least because most families bury their dead immediately as custom requires.

All parties - foreign forces, the Taleban, and civilians too - have an interest in advancing their point of view, leading to wildly conflicting claims of casualties.

In this latest incident, the Taliban claim that not a single insurgent was killed or injured, which, given the degree of control they claim to exert over Baghran, seems unlikely. As Qari Yusuf put it, “There are no Afghan forces there. The entire district is controlled by the Taliban.”

But, if the dozens of eyewitnesses are to be believed, it cannot be true that the strike was as precise and clinical as the Coalition claims.

The dispute over basic facts is unlikely to be resolved, and all sides remain entrenched in their positions.

“[The Taliban] are sore that we hit them, which is why they are putting out these claims of civilian casualties,” said the ISAF officer. “But we know what we did there was right.”

“The true story of the Iraq war has been redacted [i.e. edited out] from the mainstream corporate media,” says Brian De Palma, whose hard-hitting Iraq drama, Redacted, premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week. “If we are going to cause such disorder, then we must face the horrendous images that are the consequences of these events.”

De Palma, who is best known for movies like Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables, has clearly produced a stunning anti-war work. In a detailed and sympathetic review, Time magazine calls it “a cry of national shame“.

Redacted is inspired by a real event, the March 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family and torching of their bodies and their home, by four American soldiers. It is constructed of seemingly real snippets of media: YouTube-like blogs, video posts, picture-phone emails and a daily video record kept by one of the soldiers.

The reaction of the British press to this film reveals much about the corporate media’s attitude to war.

So far, the Guardian’s response has been sadly typical of the newspaper’s overall approach to Iraq, just hoping the war will somehow go away so we can get on with the important news, such as Amy Winehouse’s drug problem and the price of organic food: “Yes, this is a stupid war. Yes, there are lots of media outlets. And people are dying on both sides.”

The Times is even more explicit: “Is the public really ready to pay to see films about nasty, bloody, complicated wars that most wish would simply go away?” All the Mirror can say about it is to pick on the film’s depiction of an Al-Qaeda execution of a US soldier.

But the Telegraph devoted half a page to the film, including this from its reviewer: “There are several references to the shortcomings of the mainstream media in reporting the real horrors of the Iraq war; de Palma makes a telling point with these alternative narrative devices.”

Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times raves about it: “Crafted not just for a new conflict but also for a new age of multiform, open-access image technology, this is a brilliant film with a passionate payload of political conviction.”

See this film if you can, and better still, write us a review.

This highly disturbing nine-minute US airforce video is alluded to – but without an explicit link – in a recent dispatch by Declan Walsh, the Guardian’s correspondent embedded with troops in Afghanistan. It shows people coming out of a mosque and a C-130 gunship hunting them down.

Walsh writes: “For a chilling display of the awesome power of American air strikes, look no further than the internet.

“A nine-minute clip on YouTube offers a terrifying glimpse of the way the war is being won and lost in southern Afghanistan. The video, filmed from the belly of a Spectre AC-130 gunship, shows an attack on an alleged insurgent camp, rendered through a quivering black and white screen and the pilot’s mechanical monotone.

“The crosshairs wander across a cluster of buildings, seeking out targets and shredding them to pieces. The bombs blitz mud dwellings, turn vehicles into fireballs, and mow down dozens of small white figures - people - as they sprint hopeless for their lives. ‘You are clear to level the building,’ says the voice. The only sop to local sensitivities is that the Americans avoid hitting a mosque.

“This is the death-dealing air power that has allowed Nato and US troops to spread deep into Afghanistan’s most remote and hostile territory.”

Walsh also notes that “Human rights groups estimate that 230 civilians were killed in combat in southern Afghanistan last year; another 300 have died in Helmand this year, according to one estimate. The majority perished in air strikes. Last December Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, wept as he spoke of his frustration to stop coalition forces ‘killing our children’.”

As Iraq spirals into the abyss, Bush is whipping up a storm against Iran, helped by Murdoch’s Fox news. Here’s his full speech from last night – plus edited “highlights” on Iran below. And here is Robert Greenwald’s frightening, must-watch video on Fox’s campaign for war on Iran.

Bush on Iran, Aug 28 2007: Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. … Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent… Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. …

Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. … Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. …

Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people. Members of the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are supplying extremist groups with funding and weapons, including sophisticated IEDs. And with the assistance of Hezbollah, they’ve provided training for these violent forces inside of Iraq. Recently, coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months — despite pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in Iraq. …

I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East. The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that could imperil the civilized world. Extremists of all strains would be emboldened by the knowledge that they forced America to retreat. Terrorists could have more safe havens to conduct attacks on Americans and our friends and allies. Iran could conclude that we were weak — and could not stop them from gaining nuclear weapons. And once Iran had nuclear weapons, it would set off a nuclear arms race in the region. …

The most important and immediate way to counter the ambitions of al Qaeda and Iran and other forces of instability and terror is to win the fight in Iraq.

The Financial Times (Aug 17) reports a detailed analysis of media workers killed in the war: The conflict in Iraq has become the deadliest of any modern war for the press, according to reports from journalist organisations that are causing deep concern in newsrooms around the world.

At least 112 editors, reporters and photographers, and a further 40 media support staff such as translators and drivers, have been killed on duty in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

By contrast, the CPJ estimates, 38 journalists died covering Algeria’s conflict between 1993 and 1996, 66-71 died covering Vietnam, and 68 died while reporting on the second world war.

Last year’s death toll in Iraq was the highest the CPJ had recorded in a single country since its foundation in 1981.

The CPJ’s estimate counts only those deaths that its researchers can verify as having been caused by hostile action - such as deliberately targeting a journalist or when a reporter is caught in cross-fire - and excludes accidents such as car and aircraft crashes.

Other estimates put the death toll even higher. Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for press freedom, calculates that at least 198 journalists and media assistants have been killed in the conflict and scores more have been kidnapped.

The International Federation of Journalists puts the number above 200.
Media workers’ deaths in conflict:
Iraq (since Mar 2003)    112
Vietnam (1955-1975)    66
Korean War    17
World War II    68
World War I    2
Deaths in Iraq 
By nationality
Iraqi    90
European    13
Other Arab countries    3
US    2
All other countries    5
Note: one journalist had dual Iraqi-Swedish citizenship and he is listed in each nationality
By circumstances  

Murdered    73
Crossfire or other acts of war    39
By embedded status  
Embedded    7
Non embedded or ‘unilateral’    105
By job   
Nationality    Deaths
Photojournalists*    28
Reporters and editors    70
Producers    7
Technicians    7
*Includes still photographers and camera operators
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom Forum 

The organisations agree, however, that the loss of life has been heaviest among Iraqi journalists. Security fears have prompted many US and European news organisations to restrict their reporters’ travel, leaving them heavily reliant on Iraqi reporting about events outside Baghdad.

According to the CPJ, 90 Iraqi journalists have died covering the conflict, compared with 13 Europeans and two US citizens. Many worked for Iraqi news organisations such as Aswat al-Iraq, a news agency, and Radio Free Iraq, but others appear to have been targeted for working for western news outlets.

Hundreds of foreign reporters, often embedded with US and UK military units, were covering Iraq at the beginning of the war. The spiralling violence has since forced many international broadcasters and newspapers to scale back their operations and rely on Iraqi journalists, says Joel Campagna, Middle East senior programme co-ordinator for the CPJ.

“Over the last three years Iraqi journalists have assumed an indispensable role in reporting this conflict and making local and international news-gathering possible,” he says. “Their increased role has translated into increased risk.”

The violence, coupled with the cost of providing security, has deterred all but Iraq’s own media and the largest international news organisations from maintaining a presence in Iraq. “One thing you don’t see much of is freelancers,” Mr Campagna notes.

The CPJ estimates 84 of the journalists killed in Iraq were victims of insurgent action, either murdered or caught up in suicide bombings or crossfire.

It attributes 15 deaths to US fire, but says its investigations have found no evidence of deliberate targeting of journalists by US troops.

Reuters has lost six journalists in conflict, all killed by US troops.The news agency has asked the US military to investigate last month’s deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, a photographer and driver, after its inquiries challenged the US account that they had died in a firefight with insurgents.

“Our preliminary investigation raises real questions about whether there was fighting at the time the two men were killed,” says David Schlesinger, Reuters editor-in-chief.

In a blog entry after the event, Mr Schlesinger commented: “There aren’t many news organisations left in Iraq. The ones that are there take a terrible calculated risk.”

Iraqi journalists such as Khalid Hassan, a reporter and interpreter shot while driving to work for the New York Times in Baghdad last month, run additional risks because the war has invaded the neighbourhoods in which they live, Mr Campagna says. “For Iraqi journalists living in the conflict it is very difficult to escape.”

The threats to Iraq’s journalists have come just as the country is trying to build up its media, he notes.

“Since the invasion, more Iraqis than ever have joined the profession of journalism. [But] many have been forced to leave the profession or seek refuge in other countries because of threats they have received because of their journalism.”