[Paul Victorey]

We're at war with Iraq, not an Arab news station.

And no, Al Jazeera wasn't knocked out by the US, Al Jazeera is not based in Iraq, it's based in Qatar. It was formed from the remnants of a spinoff of BBC, the British Broadcasting Corp., and it's actually been praised worldwide for reporting on both sides of issues. In fact, it was created specifically to defy the censorship of many Arab states; BBC Arab was discontinued because the Saudis didn't like a story they aired, and so the politically moderate Emir of Qatar formed Al Jazeera, staffed by many of the same people, to report news without censorship.

In fact, their motto is "we get both sides of the story", and they're famous for giving airtime to things like the Israeli side of the conflicts. They've at one time or another been banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria for reporting on corruption in those governments. They've had hundreds of their journalists tortured or killed, and many more threatened, so you can't say these people aren't risking their lives to bring the world information.

So Al Jazeera is not something that's just a propaganda factory, they're actually pretty good journalists and as objective as you can expect any journalists to be. In fact, they've specifically refused to air propaganda from any side, and they've never stopped airing a story because it would offend some nation.