Lots of people died for this??

Iraqi Journalists Add Laws to Their List of War's Dangers

Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.

Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who ''publicly insults'' the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.

No doubt our disingenuous Commander-in-Chief drooled all over himself with envy when he learned of Paragraph 226, but it's too damn hard to contemplate that anyone had their life taken from them for this crap.