Iraq's New Democracy?

Hey now Iraq has freedom of the press right? Yeah... free to get the crap beat out of you for printing anything which might give the rest of the world a clue as to our real progress there...
Here's an example of one of the big 'improvements" we have made to the Iraqi people...

news.yahoo.com...
BAGHDAD ,Iraq - A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.

All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests."

This is U.S. style pseudo democracy though. Same thing happens here as well with subjects that the government doesn't want you to bring to public attention. Although our reporters have been far better trained/scared into not performing such dastardly deeds like giving the full truth.

Give them some time. Eventually all good reporters will be weeded out of the lot. Not that there is many there to begin with.

[edit on 4-5-2005 by Frith]

One has to take a moment to look at this issue from the Iraqi perspective, the US is telling the world now that we invaded them to dispose Sadaam and bring freedom to the Iraqi people, after of course, that the invasion wasn't about any Iraqi connection to 9-11, then it wasn't about any mythical threat to the free world or WMD's. We are promising them freedom, real democratic, say what you want to say freedom, yet their reporters are being beaten and threatened with death for taking pictures of long gas lines?! What the hell kind of democracy are we installing there? I'd be deeply disturbed by this, especially if I was being radiatedand my power had been out for two years, the money allocated by the US and others to fix my power and water literally being handed recently to the security forces who are beating up the journalists. Just to refresh your memory, over 12 billion dollars was allocated to rebuild their infrastructure. The remaining 8 some odd billion that wasn't lost or bounced around, was just handed over to the new Iraq military and security forces, the US military in other words. Just an off the wall question, if we just handed the rebuild funds over to the military, who exactly is now being contracted to rebuild,
and with what?

The people of Iraq dont understand democracy and its going to take a while and it just so happends that freedom of the press is apart of democracy.
You have to bear in mind that it took thousands of years to devlope democracy in western civilization. 80 years ago TE Lawance was leading arab tribes in the revolt against the turks.
Its not hard to understand why there might be a few hipcups along the road to democracy thats if a civil war can be avoided.

[edit on 4-5-2005 by xpert11]

Originally posted by twitchy
Here's an example of one of the big 'improvements" we have made to the Iraqi people...

I really dont like that attitude... it shows that you wont accept any positive news coming out of Iraq and that you highlight the bad news. We need less people like you.

Well if current Democracy in United States was used to establish a Democracy in Iraq, then its clear to me, that its a very one sided "democracy" - more a Police State situation. Freedom of Speech - you can forget that! You have the Right to remain Silent and say what I tell you to! Or else you can SHUTUP!

Originally posted by GeniusSage

Originally posted by twitchy
Here's an example of one of the big 'improvements" we have made to the Iraqi people...

I really dont like that attitude... it shows that you wont accept any positive news coming out of Iraq and that you highlight the bad news. We need less people like you.

There's good news comming out of Iraq? That's odd, because the last I heard there is a war going on there. You mean like the nearly three hundred people that have died there in the last two days alone or the final concession of the lies that took us there in the first place? Get real.
Im guessing by your choice of avatars that you are an advocate of war and blood shed, so maybe I don't like you either. But hey, this is America, and this is called dissension, so get over it.
War, lies, scandals, billions of dollars and thousands dead, and you couldn't be happier about bringing democarcy to Iraq. Well, nutjob, this is a little taste of the democracy we are bringing them. They are beating the # out of reporters that take pictures of bad news, so folks like you don't have to listen to real atrocity. This isn't an isolated event, while I doubt you bothered to look into the information I provided, this ia apparently the policy of the US trained Iraqi Security forces. Good news. LOL, yeah just great isn't it?

[edit on 6-5-2005 by twitchy]