[Lerkfish]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...ixnewstop.html

interesting excerpt:

The authoritarian stance towards the press seems redolent of the days of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government has closed the offices of al-Jazeera, the most important Arab satellite station, accusing it of inciting the insurgents.


In Najaf journalists were summoned yesterday morning by the city's police chief, Ghalab al-Jazeera. It was said that he wanted to parade some captured members of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, who have launched their second uprising in four months.


Instead the police chief delivered a blunt warning: journalists had two hours to leave Najaf or face arrest. Mr Jazeera's official explanation for the decision was that police guarding the hotel had found 550 lbof dynamite in a car nearby. That seems unlikely.


The police rarely venture out of their stations and the street outside the hotel is almost always deserted.


Mr Jazeera's expressions of concern were quickly followed by a thinly veiled attack on the foreign press.


"We know you are neutral journalists despite the fact you did not report the bad actions by Sadr's people when they beheaded and burned innocent people and the Iraqi police," he said.


For good measure, Mr Jazeera also threatened to arrest Iraqi drivers and translators working for the press corps if we did not comply. The 30-odd journalists staying at the Sea Hotel decided to stay in Najaf.


Shortly after the deadline expired, the first bullets struck the building. But the sniper was almost certainly an Iraqi policeman, given that the Mahdi army fighters were more than two miles away.


Then armed police raided the hotel and tried to arrest the journalists, before imposing a new two-hour deadline to leave the city.

[eklipse]

It's okay, Iraq's new Great Leader� has decreed that all members of the media be expelled from Najaf until after the death squads finish their important work.

The reporters will be safe and we won't have to hear about all the nasty, scary stuff that goes on there.

Everybody wins!