Axe, Out of Iraq, Explains
As many of you know, David Axe spent the last few months reporting regularly from Iraq for Defense Tech and other publications. Then, two weeks ago, those reports abruptly stopped.
In the online edition of Editor & Publisher, David explains why:
In early February, I was embedded at a remote Iraqi Army training base, and interviewing a U.S. officer about the development of Iraqi security forces when a sour-faced U.S. Army sergeant pulled up in a Humvee. He ordered me to put away my cameras and get in.
"You're in violation of regulations," he said. I thought it was a joke. So did the officer. But the sergeant persisted. So I apologized to my interviewee, stowed my gear and climbed into the Humvee.
Over the next 36 hours, I was shuttled from base to base and finally to Kuwait -- under armed guard for all but the final leg. I never got an official explanation for what was happening. From my guards and others, I gleaned that I had published supposedly sensitive information on my blog at www.noahshachtman.com, thus allegedly endangering U.S. forces and disqualifying me for a military embed.
James: "In those apparently-unlamented "Dark Ages," the US Government could not hold a trial in camera. all criminal proceedings were public because of the primitive belief that the Constitution forbade secret tribunals."
You should perhaps study history and law a bit more. That WWII reporter was a US citizen and not a combatant, let alone an illegal combatant. No noncombatants such as journalists have of late been tried secretly, or indeed at all, for their reporting. And the only US citizens whom the Bush Administration has wished to try in military tribunals (Hamdi and Padilla) were caught either overseas or immediately upon arrival from overseas, in accordance with ex parte Quirin (1942). The only thing unusual about our treatment of illegal combatants now vs. historically is that we have not had any executions recently.
Posted by: DWPittelli at October 23, 2006 7:27 PM