From the Daily Times, journalist Khalid Hasan writes:

WASHINGTON: Nayyar Zaidi, the well-known US-based Pakistani-American journalist, who has been a citizen of the United States for more than 30 years has been in US custody for the last four months on what are said to be terrorism-related charges...

The Homeland Security Department or the FBI have made no announcement about his arrest or incarceration. His family, when asked for his whereabouts, has continued to claim that “he is in Pakistan”. The Pakistan embassy, like Zaidi’s journalist colleagues, who have repeatedly phoned the family, has also been given the same answer. When asked why he is in Pakistan and what has taken him there or how long he is to be away, the callers have been told, “We cannot say” or “We do not know.” The news of Zaidi’s arrest – he is believed to be in an Ohio prison – was broken by the New Jersey-based website Des Prades at the weekend.

The current war in Iraq by Mr. Bush has shown to the world, if not to the blinded American citizens by a corporate dominated media, that the journalistic enterprise is to be threatened, intimidated, and killed.  As many have noted that the war and occupation of Iraq is the deadliest war for journalists.

I still have not forgotten the fact that the U.S. military fired on a hotel containing correspondents, during the initial phase of the war, which resulted in the death of one journalist.

Nor do news organizations forget that journalists and videographers have been incarcerated at Abu Ghraib and other jails throughout Iraq without access to lawyers.

Remember that Mr. Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jezeera's Iraq news operation, and that there has been pressure by his administration to shut down the entire operation that is based in Qatar.

Freedom for journalists is crucial to a free society.  Mr. Bush, as the world knows, is actively against the journalistic enterprise because he does not tolerate a free society, which makes him comrades with the governments of North Korea, Burma, and other totalitarian regime,