No news is good news?

The Bush administration tells us they have to spend millions, planting positive news items in the foreign press because the "good news" in Iraq is not being told. They accuse al-Jazeera of writing fake propaganda, as opposed to theirs, which I suppose is real propaganda. It's going to be hard to sell that argument in the court of world opinion when our troops participate in such blatant intimidation and theft as this against accredited journalists.

Ali Fadhil, just won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award and also happens to be the the first reporter who managed to get the truth out about Fallujah when we staged our big offensive in March 04.

He's an Iraqi journalist who works for the UK Guardian and Channel 4. That can hardly be honestly construed as the opposition press. Yet American troops blasted their way into his home in Baghdad yesterday, with guns blazing, where he was sleeping with his wife and infant children. Why?

Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated.

The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.

The director of the film, Callum Macrae, said yesterday: "The timing and nature of this raid is extremely disturbing. It is only a few days since we first approached the US authorities and told them Ali was doing this investigation, and asked them then to grant him an interview about our findings.

"We need a convincing assurance from the American authorities that this terrifying experience was not harassment and a crude attempt to discourage Ali's investigation."

I'd like some assurances on that myself. The circumstantial evidence suggests Ali could not have been a least likely suspect. They threw him on the floor, cuffed and hooded him and dragged him out of his home. They released him a few hours later, but they didn't release his tapes. The tapes that were relevant to the interview he was requesting.

Draw your own conclusions, I know what I think. It stinks.