Haifa Street

The execution of Iraqi election workers on Baghdad's Haifa street was
probably not, properly speaking, a murder. It was a political act. There has
been no suggestion that the killers of the electoral workers had any personal
grudge against them. Probably any electoral workers would have done. While most
killers seek to hide their faces and plan their attacks so no one can see them,
these killers scorned masks and chose a busy street in Baghdad to carry out
their work because they wanted to send a message. According to Abdul
Hussein Al-Obedi of the Associated Press:

In Baghdad, dozens of gunmen-- unmasked and apparently unafraid to show
their faces-- executed three election officials on Sunday, part of their
campaign to disrupt next month's parliamentary ballot. ... The deadly strikes
Sunday highlighted the apparent ability of the insurgents to launch attacks
almost at will, despite confident assessments by U.S. military commanders that
they had regained the initiative after last month's campaign against militants
in Fallujah. ... Meanwhile, in a message passed on by lawyers who visited him
in his cell last week, Saddam denounced the elections as an American plot. ...

During morning rush hour, about 30 armed insurgents, hurling hand grenades
and firing guns, swarmed onto Haifa Street, the scene of repeated clashes
between U.S. forces and insurgents. They stopped a car carrying five employees
of the Iraqi Electoral Commission and killed three of them. The other two
escaped. The commission condemned the attack as a "terrorist
ambush."

Two or three dozen people, at the most, would normally have witnessed these
events. But due to the great good fortune of the killers, a photographer from
the Associated Press was present and pictures of the execution were carried on
newspapers throughout the globe, sending the executioner's message not merely to
a handful of bystanders to hundreds of millions of readers throughout the world.

Salon
says:

A source at the Associated Press knowledgeable about the events covered in
Baghdad on Sunday told Salon that accusations that the photographer was aware
of the militants' plans are "ridiculous." The photographer, whose
identity the AP is withholding due to safety concerns, was likely "tipped
off to a demonstration that was supposed to take place on Haifa Street,"
said the AP source, who was not at liberty to comment by name. But the
photographer "definitely would not have had foreknowledge" of a
violent event like an execution, the source said.

Here was where the killers really lucked out. The AP photographer, though
caught at unawares, who definitely had no "foreknowledge" of what was
going down and at the worst expected a street demonstration, did not take cover,
even as soldiers and Marines are trained to do when shooting starts. He was made
of sterner stuff and held his ground, taking pictures of people he did not know
killing individuals he did not recognize for reasons he would not have known
about. This -- in the midst of "30 armed insurgents, hurling hand grenades
and firing guns" -- as the Associated Press report says. And he continued
to take photographs for a fairly long period of time, capturing not just a
single photograph, but a sequence of them. Salon continues:

Reporting from the most perilous sectors of a war zone is a complicated
business, both in terms of access and safety. The kind of flimsy
commentary-with-an-agenda bouncing around the conservative blogosphere right
now regarding an AP insurgency against the war effort is not only a disservice
to the public but a dishonor to the many journalists who have been injured or
killed carrying out their dangerous mission in Iraq.

The journalists who have been killed or wounded in Iraq are rightly honored
because noncombatants, belonging to neither side, who have the courage to walk
into danger to gather news deserve every distinction than can be bestowed. They
should not be confused, nor their memory sullied, by association with
individuals who, posing as protected
persons, act as mouthpieces of terrorist organizations, which would have
been the case if the AP photographer had not been there to innocently cover a
demonstration. That is why asking questions about what happened on Haifa Street
is so important. It is not, as Salon would have it, a question of an obscure
blogger impugning the integrity of journalists. On the contrary, it is about
maintaining the integrity of journalists. As the Crimes
of War site notes, the protections accorded to journalists are largely
provided by custom.

The rights most journalists enjoy in wartime today were won in their
respective national political cultures. In the final analysis, field
commanders tolerate the presence of the press because of the political power
and legal protections the press has acquired in their own local arenas. ...
But journalists roaming around the wilder conflicts of the world are forced to
live instead by the Dylan dictum: to live outside the law you must be honest.
Never pretend to be what you are not or deny being what you are unless your
life depends on it.

Every rogue "journalist" who undermines this customary protection
-- the men who violate the Dylan dictum and live dishonestly -- impugn
journalistic integrity far more than a 'conservative blogger' and serve to
increase the already great peril under which legitimate journalists labor.

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

On Haifa Street.