Another black day to Iraqi media

Iraqi fledgling media witnesses today another black day with the death announcement of two local journalists: one in Baghdad and another in Diayala province, Aseel Kami and Khalid al-Ansary report for Reuters.

Wisam Ali Ouda, a 32-year old cameraman for Afaq TV channel, was shot to dead Wednesday in Baghdad's eastern Obaidi district by U.S. soldiers, according to the station's spokeswoman.

"We confirm one of our employees was killed by an American sniper," Bushra Abdul-Amir, head of public relations at the station told Reuters, citing testimonies given by witnesses to the station's managers.

It is an accusation echoed by Hadi Jalu, deputy director of NGO Iraq's Journalistic Freedoms Observatory. "They all said an American soldier killed him," he said.

U.S. army denied any civilians had been killed during military operations in Obaidi on Wednesday.

While the second journalist was Haidar Hashim al-Husseini, a reporter for the local al-Sharq newspaper who was found dumped in a field with nine other corpses in Diyala province, about 60 kilometer northeast of Baghdad, after being kidnapped on Tuesday.

When this ends for God sake?

kassakhoon@gmail.com

Our government and the magic key

It sounds that our "national unity" government hoists now the white flag as it grows desperate for not reaching any agreement between all its political factions to have normalcy back to this war-torn country.

It now turns its eyes to beyond its borders to have somone with a magic key.

Today, our president Jalal Talabani sent a letter to Qatar's Emir, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, in which he expresses his appreciation to the efforts he made to solve the crisis in Lebanon and invites him to visit Iraq.

I hope that Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani would accept Talabani's invitation to visit Iraq but with a magic key to get our country back on the track.

Do you think that Iraq's magic key is no long with the Iraqis?

kassakhoon@gmail.com