The U.S.-funded al-Hurra channel ($60 million seed money plus $40 million added by Congress to reach 80 percent of Iraq's population with over-air transmitters) quickly lost its luster with the siege of Fallujah seen from inside the city on rival networks. The final straw for U.S. credibility were still pictures of the sadistic indignities inflicted by American military policemen on some of the 7,000 prisoners in Baghdad's central prison. These were front-paged and the lead item on television news the world over.

Under an $82.3 million contract awarded to San Diego-based Science Applications International, the Iraqi Media Network, a second U.S. venture dubbed al-Iraqiya, took over the former regime's state-owned television network. But even before Fallujah and the incriminating pictures, the network was struggling against Iran-sponsored networks that moved into Iraq as soon as the Saddam Hussein regime fell -- lock, stock and satellite networks For the past year, al-Jazeera -- later joined by al-Arabyia -- broadcast 24/7 in Arabic and blankets the Arab world from Marrakech to Muscat. They have long supplanted CNN, FOX, CNBC and the venerable BBC (the beeb) and offer unrelenting video that shows "collateral" damage in the form of dead women and children, or women and children alive but bleeding from wounds inflicted by U.S. bombs and bullets. Their people-in-the-street interviews recount hair-raising tales of American cruelty juxtaposed with U.S. soldiers breaking into homes and finding nothing except for terrified women and children.

These Arabic channels have some forty crews between them and staff every major city. From inside Fallujah, besieged by U.S. Marines, they broadcast live from bombed out buildings, damaged mosques and an overcrowded hospital.

Al-Jazeera receives videotapes from time to time from Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, which they edit before airing them. U.S. requests for the original, uncut, raw tapes go unanswered.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has appealed directly to the rulers of Qatar to curb the excesses of al-Jazeera, the network the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, launched with a $90 million subsidy. But the emir keeps repeating that he believes in freedom of the press and al-Jazeera enjoys total freedom. But the network still gets an annual subsidy of some $30 million from the Qatari government. The satellite network's talking heads criticize conservative regimes from the Gulf to North Africa. But the 4,000-strong ruling Al Thani family remains off limits Ms. Tutwiler recently accepted a senior position with the New York Stock Exchange. Burnishing NYSE's tarnished image is duck soup next to what Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak described as a level of anti-Americanism never seen or felt before.

U.S. prestige has steadily dwindled since the Sept. 11, 2001, aerial attacks against New York and Washington. Confirming the worst suspicions of the Arab world's conspiracy theorists, al-Arabyia and al-Jazeera juxtapose Israelis killing Palestinians and Americans killing Iraqis. From university professors to cab drivers, Iraqis argue they are victims of a Judeo-Christian crusade against the Muslim world.

Long gone are the heady days of liberation from Saddam's sadistic tyranny. The Financial Times, a newspaper read by government, academic and media elites in some 200 countries, commented, "The misjudgments of Paul Bremer and his Pentagon masters, far from steering Iraq towards freedom and democracy, have brought it to just beyond the brink of anarchy."

Israel's leading newspaper Ha'aretz delivered the knockout punch to the Bush Administration's image problem when Orit Shohat wrote, under the headline "Remember Fallujah," that the U.S. was now guilty of "war crimes."

During the first two weeks of April, the Ha'aretz story said, "the American Army committed war crimes in Fallujah on a scale unprecedented for this war...The sight of decapitated children, the rows of dead women and the shocking pictures of the soccer stadium that was turned into a temporary grave for hundreds of the slain -- all were broadcast to the world only by the al-Jazeera network. During the operation in Fallujah, according to the organization Doctors Without Borders, U.S. Marines even occupied the hospitals and prevented hundreds of the wounded from receiving medical treatment. Snipers fired from rooftops at anyone who tried to approach."

The article in Israel's equivalent of the New York Times said, "The only conclusion that has been drawn thus far from the indiscriminate killing in Fallujah is the expulsion of al-Jazeera from the city. Since the start of the war, the Americans have persecuted the network's journalists, not because they report lies, but because they are virtually the only ones who manage to report the truth. The Bush administration, in cooperation with the American media, is trying to hide the sights of war from the world, and particularly from American voters."

Adding insult to injury, the Ha'aretz's article continued, "the ethical dilemma in Israel over the targeted killings must make the American government laugh. After Fallujah, Israeli Defense Forces commanders can feel easier with their consciences -- and especially with the consciences of those who refuse to carry out such operations. The one-ton bomb that was dropped on an apartment building in Gaza in order to assassinate Salah Shehadeh, which also killed 14 civilians, is almost like throwing candy compared to the number of bombs the Americans dropped on the houses of residents of crowded Fallujah."

The Israeli news report has been widely circulated in the Arab world -- and denials, however convincing, won't carry any weight. Exit Ambassador Tutwiler. Her mission was indeed impossible.

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Arnaud de Borchgrave was a former editor of Newsweek and now is an editor at large for UPI.
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