Press gag?

With so many forces trying to prove that America cannot bring stability and democracy to Iraq, it was sad to see the Bush administration’s proconsul there, Paul Bremer III, issuing an order that is likely to set back both of those desirable goals. In a scene distressingly evocative of neighbouring Middle Eastern autocracies, Bremer sent American soldiers to shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday. The stated reason was that by printing false anti-American rumours, the Shiite weekly, Al Hawza, incited violence.

One of the dispatches that led to the closing of Al Hawza was a February report claiming that an American missile, not a terrorist car bomb, had caused an explosion that killed more than 50 Iraqi police recruits. False charges like that have helped poison Iraqi opinion against American forces. Yet it is possible to condemn such malicious rumour-mongering without endorsing the paper’s shutdown.Newspapers like Al Hawza do not create the hostility Americans face in Iraq - they reflect it. Shutting them down is not a promising way to dissolve that hostility. It is hard to believe that the outraged Baghdadis will now refuse to believe hateful rumours circulated around. Nor is this censorship likely to help convince Iraqis that US occupation of Iraq is to help transform it into a regional showcase of US-style freedoms. — The New York Times