IRAQ - Nov. 24 - Arab TV Channel Closed.

Police raid the Baghdad offices of the Al-Arabiya TV channel shutting it down after it recently broadcast a Saddam speech. (This cames days after US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld criticised Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, the other main satellite TV channel that broadcasts to the region in Arabic. Both show daily footage of the struggle between US forces and insurgents, provoking visual parallels with Israeli army crackdowns against Palestinians on TV screens throughout the Arab world. CPA officials were out of sight on Nov. 24, a step that may have been designed to cast the affair as Iraqi-led. But few observers in Baghdad believe such a decision could have been taken without a go-ahead from Washington). Shortly before the raid, the November chairman of the US-appointed IGC, Jalal Talabani, says: "Saddam in our eyes is a criminal, a torturer, a war criminal, and whoever disseminates for him exposes himself to legal punishment. We're going to open a court case against Al-Arabiya...because it...disseminates Saddam's propaganda". Rumsfeld told a briefing at the Pentagon on Nov. 21: "Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera, are, you know, just violently anti-coalition, and were pro-Saddam Hussein in the case of Al-Jazeera in such an obvious way". A news editor at Al-Arabiya in Dubai, Salah Nejm, told Reuters: "We regret this measure and we do not believe we have done anything to warrant such an action. They did not even give the office a warning... and we wish we had been given a warning or a chance to reach an understanding". (Despite several high-profile anti-guerrilla sweeps, and the use of reprisal-style tactics such as demolishing attackers' homes, guerrillas continue to attack and kill US troops on a daily basis. US forces seem to have moved away from "hearts and minds" operations in favour of brute force to end the guerrilla campaign, which has been harming the image of the coalition and setting back reconstruction. Talabani says: "We are fighting criminals and murderers. The only way to deal with them is to eradicate them".