An Al-Queda “letter to the editor”.......
What does it matter what your "understanding" of it is, NYT? You're going to report what you want, anyway, regardless of what the truth is.
But the Times is so nice to terrorists....
Notice how the Times’ statement carefully avoids observing that there are bad guys in Iraq who do bad things, like murdering journalists.
Operation Sets up Combat Outpost, Air Drops Aid to Village Residents
Soldiers reflect on the success of Operation Cobra Strike.
Since Operation Cobra Strike there hasn’t been a shot fired, mortar launched, or Al Qaeda in Iraq incident in Jalula, As Sadiyah, or Tibaj. The local people are now approaching the Iraqi Police in the neighborhood, offering them food and thanking them for their presence in Tibaj.
Driving through Jalula recently, Coalition Forces said they saw more people out on the street, vendors selling goods, and people giving them thumbs up then ever before.
“The purpose of this operation was to clear out anti-Iraqi forces from the area and secure it as a staging point for future operations,” the captain said. “The establishment of a combat outpost and check points sets the condition for future success in the area.”
A medical operation to further help the Tibaj people is also planned for the future.
Sadiyah:
July 7, 2007
To the north, in a Kurdish area near the border with Iran, a suicide car bomber struck Friday night outside a cafe, killing at least 19 people, all members of the same family, the U.S. military said. The blast occurred in a village near Sadiyah, about 100 miles northeast of Baghdad, said Army Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, a military spokesman.
The village is in remote eastern Diyala, a province where U.S. forces have been waging offensives aimed at insurgents who fled a security crackdown in Baghdad and at Al Qaeda militants who use the region as a staging ground for attacks in the capital.
In Samawah, Abdul Razzaq Zaidi, a neighborhood representative, said he hid with his family at home during the clashes, hesitant to emerge though he said the militants had left the area. Many residents stayed inside, he said, unable to shop or scrounge for gas and kerosene, which are in short supply.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq7jul07,0,5377730.story?coll=la-home-center
Iraqi New York Times journalist killed
BAGHDAD - An Iraqi journalist for The New York Times was shot to death Friday on his way to work, less than an hour after he called the bureau to say a checkpoint had blocked his normal route, the newspaper said.
Khalid W. Hassan was the second Times employee to be killed in Iraq, the newspaper said.
Gunmen killed Hassan, 23, in the southwest Baghdad district of Sadiyah, according to a statement from the Times spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis.
The newspaper reported on its Web site that Hassan had called the bureau to say he was blocked by a checkpoint. A half-hour later, the paper said, he called his mother and told her: “I’ve been shot.”
He “was shot and killed on the way to work,” the Times statement said. “The circumstances of the attack remain unclear at this time.”
Hassan, who worked for the paper in Baghdad for four years, “was part of a large, sometimes unsung community of Iraqi news-gatherers, translators, and support staff, who take enormous risks every day to help us comprehend their country’s struggle and torment,” Bill Keller, the Times executive editor, said. “Without them, Americans’ understanding of what is happening on the ground in Iraq would be much, much poorer.”
The first Times employee killed in Iraq, Fakher Haider, 38, was shot to death in 2005 in the southern city of Basra.
Hassan’s slaying came a day after two Iraqi staffers of the London-based Reuters news agency — a photographer and a driver — were killed by clashes between U.S. forces and Shiite mililtiamen in east Baghdad.
At least 110 journalists and 40 media support staffers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists. More than 80 percent of media deaths have been Iraqis.