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armed?”
     
    “How the hell do I know whether they were armed?”
     
    “You understand why I ask the question?”
     
    “Affirmative, sir.”
     

    It was only a rough garret set high in the roof of a squalid gray stone house three streets back from the riverfront, directly across from the area the Americans were now evacuating. Huddled in the corner murmuring into a cell phone, in Arabic, was an elderly Iraqi, a veteran of the ill-fated Desert Storm and now a trusted “stringer” for the al-Jazeera television network based in gleaming modern offices in Doha, the capital city of Qatar. That phone call represented the vital link al-Jazeera holds to the battlefields of Iraq, the embodiment of its determination to make the United States look bad, really bad, at every available opportunity.
     
    The al-Jazeera network is the most controversial Arabic news channel in the Middle East. It was founded in 1996, and since then it has burgeoned from a small localized station broadcasting only in Arabic to a vast international network, broadcasting twenty-four hours a day in English. It has forty foreign bureaus worldwide with dozens of correspondents. Its staff has been recruited from all the big Western television newsrooms—the BBC, CBS, CNN, and CNBC. Al-Jazeera may be counted on, implicitly, to report any form of negligent or ill-disciplined U.S. military action anywhere in the Middle East.
     
    On this day the newsroom was busy. Bill Simons, a former BBC editor, tired of its childlike left-wing bias, had elected to pack up and join the Arabs, moving his life from South London to downtown Doha, on the east coast of the Qatar Peninsula. Bill knew a good news story as well as anyone, and the urgent tones of Abdul calling from faraway Abu Hallah on the banks of the Euphrates set his journalist’s antennae alight.
     
    How many did you say were dead? Twelve, shot down in cold blood by an American officer? Right there in the middle of the Euphrates Bridge? Jesus.
     
    Had there been a battle of any kind? What’s that? A couple of U.S. tanks slightly damaged after they opened fire on the village? Nothing serious, right? And then this American went berserk? Wow! And where are the bodies of the twelve villagers? Oh, you have them? Completely unarmed farmers just walking to their fields . . . Gimme your number, Abdul, and stand by.
     
    Forty minutes later, al-Jazeera went to work in its customary mode. Its familiar chimes, which always sounded as if they emanated from the heart of a mosque, signaled for the 4:00 P.M. news headlines. A dark-eyed beauty from Riyadh began the broadcast:
    Reports are coming in of a terrifying atrocity committed by U.S. Special Forces on a bridge over the Euphrates River near the Iraqi desert town of Hit. Twelve unarmed local farmers were apparently shot down in cold blood by an American officer. All of them died.
     
    Our correspondent was unable to provide the names of the dead, but Iraqi police are expected to supply details later this evening. So far, U.S. military chiefs in Iraq have declined to comment until more of the facts are known. The Pentagon denies all knowledge of the incident and instructed our reporters to speak to the U.S. authorities in Baghdad. We will bring you more on this breaking story as the evening progresses.
     
     
     
    For years it has been impossible for Western news networks to ignore al-Jazeera, which has been labeled the mouthpiece of both Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Any time there is an unusual military problem in the Middle East, the chances are the story hits first on al-Jazeera. And boy, was this ever unusual.
     
    Inside all newsrooms, both print and broadcast, in London, Washington, and New York, there is a near-permanent watch on the Qatar station, which is tuned in, always, to the eyes and ears of the Arab world. And when the possibility of a U.S. atrocity on the Euphrates came bounding onto the screen like a Labrador puppy on steroids, the left-inclined