An American journalist pays for his convictions with his life
Thursday, August 4, 2005
The murder of Stephen Vincent, an American reporter, by insurgents in Iraq yesterday throws the political situation in Iraq into sharp relief. A supporter of the invasion of Iraq, he becaome disillusioned after spending substantive time there. The New York Times reported as follows:
Mr. Vincent said in conversations that he was particularly incensed about the sharp divide between men and women in the Islamic world. He was close to Ms. Tuaiz [his interpreter, who was seriously wounded in the attack], who he said had declined to accept payment for her work as an interpreter. He said he believed that the American-led invasion of Iraq was justified and part of a much larger campaign against what he called “Islamo-fascism.”
But he also said he was deeply disappointed by the failure of the United States and Britain to enforce their visions of democracy here. It was the duty of journalists, he said, to expose the pitfalls of the rising tide of Shiite Islam in Iraq in order to awaken the Bush administration to the kind of nation it was helping to create.
