The editor and entire staff of a Pentagon-created, US funded Iraqi newspaper has quit in disgust saying they’re sick of American interference in their choice of subject matter. They say they’re starting their own newspaper, called Al-Sabah Al-Jedid (The New Morning).
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.”
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“We had a project to create a free media in Iraq,” Zayer said of the founding of Al-Sabah. “They are trying to control us. We are being suffocated.”Zayer accused Harris of interfering in the paper’s workings, including trying to stop some of its advertising and speaking to reporters about articles.
Among the ads that he said Harris tried to prevent was one from a new political organization called the Iraqi Republican Group. The ad ran in Monday’s issue — the last put together by Zayer’s staff.
It complained of the “griefs of occupation” and called on Iraqi elite to rally “to preserve our nation from destruction.”
Zayer said he was told by Harris that the ad was “too political.”
The Iraqis are so lucky the Americans invaded so they could impart their superior Western values like Freedom of Speech and democracy and all.