It's Official...

The Irish Times doesn't even bother to read Charles Krauthammer's ramblings before printing them.

Therefore in a week where Iran is the subject of yet more US diplomatic aggression, another UK terror suspect is shot and Iraq massacres occur daily, we are subjected to a nonsense 'opinion' piece about the use of steriods in rounders.

"Opinion: Leave it to the good people of Philadelphia, whose football fans once famously booed and threw snowballs at Santa Claus, to come up with the perfect takedown of the most inflated (in more ways than one) superstar in contemporary baseball, and probably sport."

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Something more useful:

Hotel Baghdad
There are no safe havens for journalists in Iraq, say two 'Independent' correspondents who have been there since the start of the conflict
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 04 June 2006

Iraq is so lethal for journalists because the threats are multiple. Travel without guards and you are less likely to be targeted, but vulnerable to kidnappers. Travel with guards or be embedded with US or Iraqi troops and you may be safe from kidnappers, but you are more likely to be hit by a roadside bomb.

In the past week British journalists Paul Douglas and James Brolan have been killed in a car bomb attack that left the CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier critically injured. Nothing is more absurd than to imagine - as diplomats deep in the Green Zone slyly pretend and my old friend, Rageh Omaar, has unwisely suggested - that journalists lurk in their hotel rooms or in the zone itself. If this were true then they would not have been kidnapped or killed in such numbers. And even lurking in one's hotel room is not necessarily a safe option - a fact brought home to me forcefully last November when The Independent's room in the Hamra hotel in Baghdad was torn apart by a suicide bomb.

Full Article: The Independent