More than two weeks of insurgent turmoil in Iraq, the worst since American-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago, resulted largely from the U.S. suppression of a newspaper.

Al Hawsa, a weekly paper run by the Shiite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr, had been printing false anti-American stories and inciting Mr. Sadr’s followers. So the head of the occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, ordered the newspaper suspended for 60 days. Fifty U.S. soldiers went to the newspaper office in Baghdad and chained its doors shut.

As could have been expected, the action touched off an uprising that spread through much of central and southern Iraq. Mr. Sadr’s militia, several thousand strong, seized a half dozen cities and chased away many members of the new Iraqi police force and civil defense force assigned to defend them. U.S. forces tried at first to crush the militia and capture or kill Mr. Sadr. Now they have declared a tenuous cease-fire in hopes that more moderate Shiite leaders can negotiate a compromise and restore relative law and order.

Closing down the newspaper turned out to be worse than merely throwing oil on a fire. It violated the United States’ own terms of its invasion and occupation of Iraq. For better or worse, the war in Iraq was presented as the liberation of a dictatorship and the conversion of Iraq into a peaceful, democratic country that would be a model for the rest of the Middle East.

A basic element in democracy is freedom of expression, including freedom of the press. The rule, usually attributed to Voltaire, is: “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

It’s a tough principle, frequently disputed even in the United States. Fred W. Friendly’s book “Minnesota Rag” told the story of an anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-labor newspaper that was put out of business in 1927 by a Minnesota gag law. In 1931, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 5-to-4 in favor of the publisher in a case neglected by most liberals. The appeal was financed by the conservative Col. Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune.

Freedom of expression is not absolute, of course. But Al Hawsa, for all its lies and exaggerations was not much worse than a lot of other newspapers in the area. And the United States, if grudgingly, had gotten along with the powerful Al Jazeera television network, which is watched by most Arabs, despite its one-sided view of the current strife.

Perhaps the U.S. occupation will have learned a lesson and will practice what it preaches.