Is there a covert program to kill journalists in Iraq?

[JCMach1]

We all know how much this administration hates for the real story to come out of Iraq...

Here are some of the more interesting statistics from the Committee to Protect Journalists:


By Year:
• 2007: 11
• 2006: 32
• 2005: 23
• 2004: 24
• 2003: 14

I guess you can add two more to that...

Responsibility:
• Insurgent action: 78 (Includes crossfire, suicide bombings, and murders.)
• U.S. fire: 14 (CPJ has not found evidence to conclude that U.S. troops targeted journalists in these cases. While the cases are classified as crossfire, CPJ continues to investigate.)
• Iraqi armed forces, during U.S. invasion: 3 (All are crossfire or acts of war.)
• Iraqi armed forces, post-U.S. invasion: 1 (Crossfire)
• Source unconfirmed: 8...

By Location:
• Anbar province (Fallujah, Ramadi): 6
• Nineveh province (Mosul): 15
• Baghdad province: 61
• Saleheddin province (Samara): 4
• Basrah province: 3
• Diyala province (Baqubah): 4
• Arbil province: 6
• Karbala province: 1
• Najaf province: 1
• Sulaymaniya province: 1
• At-Tamim province (Kirkuk): 1
• Unclear: 1

By embedded status:
• Embedded: 7
• Non-Embedded or “unilateral”: 97...

And yes, more dead journalists than Vietnam--

• Vietnam: Freedom Forum lists 66 journalists killed covering the conflict in Vietnam from 1955-1975. The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, which surveyed the years 1962-75, lists 71 journalists killed...

http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/Iraq/Iraq_danger.html

and more

It's been more than 16 months since CNN's former chief news executive Eason Jordan made what even he now regards as inarticulate comments about the U.S. military's role in the deaths of journalists working in Iraq.
Related News

* More from Nation & World

Inarticulate–and incendiary: Under fire from conservative bloggers and others for his suggestion at a forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the military may have targeted and killed a dozen journalists, Jordan resigned, saying he wanted to spare the network from being tarnished by "conflicting accounts" of his statements about the "alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."

Today, with the Iraq war securing the morbid title of the most deadly conflict for reporters in modern times, Jordan remains passionate about the plight of journalists in Iraq. He prefaced our conversation last week by saying he does not believe that the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists, though "it certainly has happened."

"All have been mistaken identity, but that doesn't excuse them," Jordan said. "And that was the key issue I was trying to raise, not very eloquently, in Davos. Journalists are being killed. Journalists are being detained."... http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060612/12mediatakes.htm?s_cid=rss:site1


and some more...


...Meanwhile, journalists who were not imbedded with the invading military "faced a multitude of hazards and restrictions, limiting the reporting from non-U.S. military perspectives," the CPJ report says. In some cases, those journalists "faced outright harassment from U.S. forces."

On April 8, during a pair of assaults, the U.S. military killed three journalists and wounded several more. In mid-August, American forces killed an award-winning cameraman. CPJ's report includes summaries of those events, and -- if you read between the lines -- they shed a lot of light on the Pentagon's lethally cavalier attitude.

* "In the first attack, a U.S. warplane struck an electricity generator outside the Baghdad bureau of the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. The attack occurred in an area of heavy fighting, although Al-Jazeera noted that it had provided the Pentagon with the coordinates of its offices weeks before the incident. The nearby office of Abu Dhabi TV also came under U.S. fire at the time. In October, a U.S. military spokesman acknowledged to CPJ that no investigation into the incident was ever launched."

* "In the second incident later that day, a U.S. tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, which housed most foreign correspondents in Baghdad, killing cameramen Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and Jose Couso of Spanish television channel Telecinco. U.S. troops claimed that they were responding to hostile fire emanating from the hotel. A CPJ investigative report published in May concluded that the shelling of the hotel, while not deliberate, was avoidable since U.S. commanders knew that journalists were in the hotel but failed to relay this information to soldiers on the ground."

* "On August 17, soldiers shot and killed veteran Reuters cameraman and former CPJ International Press Freedom Award recipient Mazen Dana while he filmed a U.S. tank convoy outside Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad. U.S.

soldiers said they mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher. Dana had secured permission from U.S. forces to film in the area, and, according to eyewitnesses, there was no fighting in the area when the journalist was shot.

"On September 22, the U.S. military announced that it had concluded its investigation into Dana's killing, and a Centcom spokesman told CPJ that while the journalist's death was 'regrettable,' the soldiers 'acted within the rules of engagement.' No further details were provided, and the results of the investigation have not been made public. Observers have frequently pointed out that although a soldier might mistake a camera for an RPG at a long distance, a camera would be clearly visible from the estimated 55 yards at which Dana was hit."

Overall, CPJ reports, "the conduct of U.S. troops has exacerbated the tenuous security situation for journalists in Iraq." The occupation has brought a pattern of efforts by the U.S. command to interfere with independent news-gathering.

Al-Jazeera correspondents have been arrested many times, but American journalists have hardly been exempt from harassment. In Fallujah, when guerrillas shot down a U.S. Army helicopter in early November, "U.S. troops confiscated the camera of Knight Ridder photographer David Gilkey, of the Detroit Free Press, and erased all of his photographs," CPJ reports. ... http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-03/22solomon.cfm