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FROM THE DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL TO PERSONNEL RECEIVING THE EAGLE AND THE CRESCENT: The Eagle and The Crescent is your newsletter. It tells your story for those at home who would otherwise learn of you and your work here from what they see on television and read in civilian newspapers. I know your days are long and your spare time is limited, but I ask that you take a few brief moments to forward this latest edition of the E&C to family and friends and ask them to do the same. With your help, we can make sure the people...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi journalist who stayed in Fallujah to report on the battle for his hometown says he and hundreds of other civilians who eventually turned themselves in to escape the violence suffered tough, sometimes humiliating, treatment from American and Iraqi guards. Abdul-Qader Saadi said he was subjected to multiple searches and interrogations; went unfed the first two days; was blindfolded and handcuffed; and had to sleep for days in a wooden cage buffeted by cold winds at a desert detention camp. Saadi, who has reported part-time for The Associated Press since early in the year, also complained...

Iraqi Prime Minister Opens Controversial Newspaper Shut Down by Coalition By Tarek El-Tablawy/Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's interim prime minister issued a decree allowing a controversial newspaper to reopen after U.S. officials closed it in March, setting off months of fighting between U.S. forces and militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Meanwhile, after a two-month absence, al-Sadr showed up in Najaf in an unannounced visit to the Imam Ali shrine, one of Shiism's holiest sites. With all the pomp of a rock star, the mercurial cleric was ushered into the mosque as guards and aides cut...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim prime minister issued a decree allowing a controversial newspaper to reopen after it had been closed by U.S. officials in March, setting off months of fighting between U.S. forces and militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The weekly Al-Hawza was the mouthpiece of al-Sadr's "Sadrist" movement, routinely carrying his fiery sermons on its front page along with articles sharply critical of the U.S.-led occupation, which formally ended June 28. Iraq's former American governor, L. Paul Bremer, ordered the newspaper closed for two months on March 28 for allegedly inciting...

Print media invade new Iraq Baghdad, Iraq Press, July 1, 2004 – Under the ousted leader Saddam Hussein’s long reign Iraqis had only access to five state-controlled dailies. The newspapers had different names but they were almost identical in content. The media landscape in the country since Saddam Hussein’s downfall has dramatically transformed, however. In the nearly 15 months since Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, 278 newspapers have appeared, almost one every three days. But the wide access to the print media available to the Iraqis is not matched by other outlets. Local television and radio are still in their infancy with...

BAGHDADI, Iraq — Sheik Ammar Obeidi is a marked man, threatened with death for siding with the Americans in the bloody fight for Iraq's future. He knew it from the get-go, and he accepted it as the price of his beliefs. After all, he noted, there also was a time in the early days of the United States when patriots risked their lives. Grateful for his allegiance, Americans in turn have grubstaked Obeidi in a campaign to try to sway fence-sitters among his countrymen. The result is one of those can-you-believe-this occurrences: a Marine Corps-financed, Iraqi-published newspaper now in circulation...

Local newspapers warn against ‘personality cult’ as new leaders take office Baghdad, Iraq Press, June 6, 2004 – Less than two weeks after the selection of the country’s new interim leaders, some local newspapers have warned against attempts to build up “a halo” around them. The papers were responding to the stream of articles and congratulatory cables published in the media outlets owned by the new leaders in which the writers and senders heaped praise on them. The Baghdad daily, owned by the interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has dedicated full pages to telegrams of congratulations which it says have...

IT WAS almost unprecedented in the short history of Iraq’s fledgeling free press. Instead of the usual death and mayhem, or vitriolic editorials attacking the occupation, there was a sudden surge of optimism yesterday. “It’s a new dawn for Iraq,” proclaimed Al-Sabah al-Jadid, a liberal daily, referring to Tuesday’s appointment of a new interim Iraqi President and government. “Welcome to the new Iraqi leadership,” declared Az-Zawa, the newspaper of the journalists’ union. “The Iraqi people are happy with the choice of Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer,” said the Mutamar newspaper, referring to the new President. But the violence did not suddenly abate....

 Local Iraqi starts independent newspaperSubmitted by: 3rd Marine Aircraft WingStory Identification #: 2004514111914Story by Staff Sgt. A.C. Mink Al Asad, Iraq (May 14, 2004) -- Ammar Aloba Idi of Jooba, and Sevan Lousinian, Department of Defense Arabic translator, presented the pilot edition of The Voice of the Euphrates, the first independent newspaper for the local region, to Maj. Gen. James F. Amos, commanding general, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, here May 13. "For 35 years, Saddam teach people, in school and television, to deal with United States as enemy," said Aloba Idi. "This will take a lot of time -...

The last thing they need in Baghdad is another statist medium. AS IF THE COALITION in Iraq didn't have enough problems, on May 3 most of the staff of al-Sabah (Morning), the daily newspaper published with support from the Coalition Provisional Authority, walked out. Ismael Zayer, the paper's editor in chief, announced that a new, independent daily would be established, to be called al-Sabah al-Jedid (New Morning). Zayer moved his newsroom to a private house. The story of al-Sabah, which claimed the largest daily circulation of any newspaper in Iraq, dramatizes numerous questions about how the Coalition can help construct...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The head of a U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper quit and said Monday he was taking almost his entire staff with him because of American interference in the publication. On a front-page editorial of the Al-Sabah newspaper, editor-in-chief Ismail Zayer said he and his staff were "celebrating the end of a nightmare we have suffered from for months ... We want independence. They (the Americans) refuse."

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Inside the marble-floored palace hall that serves as the press office of the U.S.-led coalition, Republican Party operatives lead a team of Americans who promote mostly good news about Iraq (news - web sites). Dan Senor, a former press secretary for Spencer Abraham (news - web sites), the Michigan Republican who's now Energy Secretary, heads the office packed with former Bush campaign workers, political appointees and ex-Capitol Hill staffers. One-third of the U.S. civilian workers in the press office have GOP ties, running an enterprise that critics see as an outpost of Bush's re-election effort with Iraq...

I need some help...there was a post here a few days ago, that spoke of a news story in the then Saddam-controlled newspaper on a warning about an attack on US soil...can anyone point to that story?

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 28 — American soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday and tightened chains across the doors after the occupation authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence. Thousands of outraged Iraqis protested the closing as an act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the hostility many feel toward the United States a year after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. "No, no, America!" and "Where is democracy now?" screamed protesters who hoisted banners and shook clenched fists in a hastily organized rally against the closing of the newspaper, Al Hawza, a radical Shiite weekly. The...

Why did the Bush administration immediately suspect that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks when there was no evidence of any connection, as Richard Clarke and other Bush critics maintain? Maybe it was because there was indeed evidence, very dramatic evidence, in fact - in the form of warnings in the state-run Iraqi press that such an attack was coming, along with praise for Osama bin Laden and his kamikaze hijackers in the days after the World Trade Center was destroyed. Less than two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper "Al-Nasiriya" carried a column headlined, "America, An Obsession Called...

THE red banner headline reads like something out of the National Enquirer. "Saddam married 18-year-old girl in spider hole," it screams. Details in the next edition, says a tiny paragraph below. Such are the tactics used to sell newspapers in Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein's fall, Iraq's press has exploded into a frenzy of free, fearless and frequently inaccurate journalism that can put the worst of the world's tabloid press to shame. The unlikely story of the former dictator's cramped nuptials may be harmless, but other stories have a sinister edge, from accounts of the immoral behaviour of the infidel occupiers...

BAGHDAD - American soldiers on Friday detained three Iraqis working for Reuters as they covered the aftermath of a U.S. helicopter crash near the volatile town of Falluja. A Reuters driver who was working with the three said they had earlier been fired on by U.S. troops as they filmed a checkpoint close to the site where a Kiowa observation helicopter was shot down by guerrillas. One pilot was killed and another injured in the crash. "We were fired on and we drove away at high speed," driver Alaa Noury said. He said Reuters cameraman Salem Uraiby had been filming...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A giant photo of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein getting a jail visit from his nemesis Ahmed Chalabi graced the front page of a Baghdad newspaper. A pale and thinner Saddam, dressed in a grey sports jacket and white robes, is sitting on a bed in his crumbling cell, next to his adversary, the longtime Iraqi opposition leader Chalabi, who returned to Baghdad after Saddam was pushed from power last April. The photo was blown up across the front page of Al-Mutamar, the paper of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC). "Today's paper sold out in record time. I...

'WE GOT HIM!'Iraqi press: Nation 'swimming in sunshine'Elsewhere in Arab world media laments 'humiliation' of capture Posted: December 16, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Iraqi newspapers generally reacted with joy and relief to Saddam Hussein's capture by U.S. forces, but commentators elsewhere in the region spoke of humiliation brought upon the Arab world by the former dictator's submission to American soliders. Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody The leading independent Iraqi daily, Al-Zaman, in an editorial titled "The Fall of Saddam is Complete and the Sun has Returned to Shine on Iraq," said the captured former dictator proved to be a "coward...

IRAQ'S new press, born after the fall of Saddam Hussein, overnight cheered his capture by US forces and called for the day to go down as a national holiday marking the end of tyranny. "Saddam Hussein, the most dangerous of criminals who fled when his regime was ousted on April 9, has finally fallen before the Iraqi people, who suffered for three decades from the power he and his family wielded," Al-Mutamar wrote. "Those who nurtured hopes of a Saddam comeback should now realise that the game is up," said the newspaper, mouthpiece of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC)....