Posted on 07/09/2004 2:33:01 PM PDT by nuconvert
HOW TO HELP IRAQ
New York Post
July 9, 2004 -- 'WE will do all that we can to help Iraq," says Ger man Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who had been in the forefront of the campaign to keep Saddam Hussein in power before liberation. "The international community must come together and help Iraq," echoes France's new Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, signaling a possible change of course in Paris. Other opponents of the liberation of Iraq have expressed similar sentiments. "Helping Iraq" was a key pledge in a communiqué issued by Iran and Syria at the end of Syrian President Bashar Assad's visit to Tehran this week.
But how sincere are these promises?
The first step toward helping Iraq is for those countries that have refused to recognize the new interim government to do so immediately, and reopen their embassies in Baghdad. Iraq's government should be allowed to reclaim and reopen the country's embassies abroad. These moves will show that everyone now accepts that Iraq has a new legitimate government.
Next, those who say they want to help must stop their disinformation campaign in Iraq. It is no secret that the bulk of rumors spread there each day come from Arab — especially Egyptian and Jordanian — intelligence services. Having shut themselves out of Iraq by an ambivalent attitude last year, Egypt and Jordan (along with other Arab states) are compounding their error by waging psychological war against the new leadership in Baghdad.
A more dramatic version of that psychological war can be observed in the Arab satellite-TV coverage of Iraq. These channels are owned by Arab emirs (Al-Jazeera in Qatar) or states (Al-Alam in Iran), and, one must assume, reflect the policies of their governments.
At the very least, these channels should stop broadcasting video messages from terror groups killing people in Iraq. This does not mean censorship, but proper journalistic treatment of material that must not be aired unedited and without comments to put it in context. The claim of impartiality cannot justify showing videos of beheadings as an act of "resistance to occupation."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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