Just days before George W. Bush took credit for delivering the almighty's gift of freedom to the people of Iraq, the Iraqi state police were arresting dozens of journalists at gunpoint in a Najaf hotel and taking them into custody.
(Those would be the same "police" hired and trained during the regime of U.S. Proconsul Paul Bremer and now under the control of U.S. appointed interim dictator, I mean Prime Minister, Ayad Alawi.)
According to reports in a Turkish newspaper, "Firing their guns in the air, the policemen, some masked, stormed into the rooms of journalists in the Najaf Sea hotel and forced them into vans and a truck."
Once at the jail, Najaf police chief Ghaleb al-Jezari told them, "You are brought here because I want to tell you that you never publish the truth. I speak the truth, but you never broadcast what we are." After the unexpected press conference at gunpoint, the police chief kissed some of the journalists and had the reporters dropped back to their hotel.
Actually, some of it sounds like the police tactics used against the protesters at the Republican national convention where record numbers were arrested, detained until after the end of the convention and then released without charges. Well, maybe except for the kissing part. And certainly the "If you don't do what I want you to do I'll kill you, but you have the freedom to do what ever you want" logic is consistent with many other Bush policies.
Turkish Press: Iraqi Police Raid Najaf Hotel, Round Up Journalists At Gunpoint
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