Courage

In Sunday's New York Times, two reporters did something quite brave. They signed their names to articles reporting that the Basra police department has been infiltrated by fundamentalist Shiite militia who use it to carry out crimes, including assassinations, and suggesting that these militia may well have ordered the killings of freelancer Steven Vincent on August 2 and New York Times stringer Fakher Haider on September 19 because of their efforts to report on this infiltration earlier. If the reporters are correct, they will have drawn a very dangerous attention to themselves. The implied tribute to their murdered colleagues is moving, and the devotion to journalism is heroic. No doubt almost all reporters in Iraq run similar risks daily, and perhaps their courage is obvious to everyone who read the articles, but it jumped out at me and seemed worth underlining.