Truth kills

Robert Fisk ponders the recent deaths of journalists in Iraq. Are they mere accidents? Or murder?

First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.

Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings – the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank – was murder?

Likewise, is it mere coincidence that voices for peace like Rachel Corrie or International Solidarity Movement activist Brian Avery, shot by Israeli troops last week in Palestine, are dying just as journalists in the occupied territories are? Is truth-seeking and peacemaking a fatal flaw?

(Thanks, Heather.)