Patrick Leahy: “Iraq is a dangerous and chaotic place for our brave American soldiers there, for our coalition partners, and for Iraqi…”

“Iraq is a dangerous and chaotic place for our brave American soldiers there, for our coalition partners, and for Iraqi families who must struggle just to make it safely through each day. It is also a perilous place for the journalists who attempt to cover the situation on the ground. They are at the front of the front lines of this conflict, and the dispatches from Iraq produced by representatives of a free and independent press are a vital conduit of information that helps the American people--and their representatives in government--to make more informed decisions. These are print reporters, television correspondents, photo journalists and the other professionals who help journalists in gathering and transmitting the news. We learned in recent days of the deaths of two more news professionals. Raad Jaafar Hamadi, a journalist with the daily Al Sabah, was shot dead in his car in the east of Baghdad on November 22. Fadhila Abdelkarim, an administrative staff worker of TV station Nainawa, was shot outside her home in Mosul on November 26.”