Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

I know Robert Fisk is controversial. But he lives and breathes the Middle East and has intimate knowledge of it. In his latest column for the Independent, he reports on the restraint that Al Jazeera has shown considering the amount of atrocities on tape it receives:

""We've trained ourselves not to go to the maximum in our feelings when we see terrible things like this," Ayman Gaballah, Al Jazeera's deputy chief editor, says bleakly. And I can see why. There are other tapes, other outrages too terrible to show. George Bush wanted to bomb the station's headquarters in Doha but staff have shown great sensitivity with what they show the world from Iraq. There is no proof that any of Al Jazeera's reporters was ever tipped off about anti-American attacks before they happened – in Iraq, I investigated these claims in 2003 and 2004 – but plenty of proof that some things are too awful to see.

On one tape, a half-naked man is held to the floor while another produces a small butcher's knife and slowly carves his way through the victim's throat, the poor man's shriek of pain dying in froths of blood until his head is eventually torn from his body.

Another tape shows 18 Iraqi policemen held captive against a demand for the release of Iraqi women prisoners. They are aged between 17 and 40 and stare at the camera hopelessly.

Al Jazeera aired the pictures and the written demands but then cut the next scene. It shows the 18 men trussed up and blindfolded in front of a ditch. A hooded man then fires into the back of one of their heads and – along with other men off-camera – goes from one body to the next, firing again and again. Some of the victims are still alive, their legs kicking and the hooded man goes to each one and fires again into their heads. Then, in the background, a bearded youth approaches the camera, holding an Islamic flag. He is singing."

None of these have been aired. And yet, the Bush administration has an active war going on against Al Jazeera as if it were owned and controlled by Bin Laden himself:

"If Al Jazeera's staff have paid a terrible price for their reporting and have been the witnesses to some of the ghastlier acts in Iraq, they appear to have the ferocious support of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who spends his millions funding the loss-making station.

Stories abound of the day that George Tenet – then America's CIA chief – turned up in Qatar to give the Emir a dressing down for Al Jazeera's reporting. There was a stiff row between the two men before the Emir walked out.

In Washington, he was invited to meet Vice-President Dick Cheney, only to find that Mr Cheney had a thick file on his desk when he walked in. It was Mr Cheney's list of complaints against Al Jazeera. The Emir told him he would not discuss it. "Then that is the end of our meeting," Mr Cheney announced. "It is," the Emir apparently replied. And walked out. The "meeting" had lasted 30 seconds.

But those are the high points, the drama of Al Jazeera. The dark moments are on those terrible tapes. I asked some of the reporters how humans could commit such atrocities. None of them knew."

Like they say, read the whole thing because the US media sure ain't reporting on it.