Iraq – And What the Press HAVEN’T told you

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Just back from Japan, China & India Tony Blair meets Senator McCain in London today during the presidential candidate’s trip to Europe.

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Comment at end

 

21st March, 2008

BREAKING NEWS: THE BBC DISSES BUSH!

[Shameful business, but hardly surprising from the BBC (BUSH-BLAIR-CRITICS). Click to read the whole story.]

IRAQ – FIVE YEARS ON

What is wrong with the British media? I understand that it is the same in America. It seems the western press’s agenda does not permit them to report good news, unless they balance it with bad news from Iraq. But they do not seem to balance reciprocally the other way.

For instance at the BBC website yesterday they show videos of five Iraqis, and they are were all negative reports.

“In a series of special reports to mark five years since the US-led invasion of Iraq, the BBC’s Hugh Sykes and Jim Muir have been talking to five Iraqis to see how they have been affected by the crisis.”

Very moving. A musical child, the man who took a sledgehammer to Saddam’s statue, a woman journalist whose husband was killed by insurgents. And, yes, I know we need to hear about their courage and their still imperfect lives. But, please, where’s the GOOD news? I do not believe … I simply DO NOT believe this is fair and balanced reporting.

And this report by Caroline Wyatt, a journalist I normally admire for her even-handedness, is not much better. Her report emphasises everything that is going wrong, and only takes a break from that when British soldiers or residents have a good word to say. It may be out of the reporters’ hands, and under editorial direction, but I think this headline grabbing approach is a misuse of licence payers’ money, and the BBC outlets really need to think about this. It is not their duty to await the troops’ departure before they inform us that things ARE getting better.

Having said that, my favourite broadcasting outlet BBC Radio 4 came up with the goods on the midnight news last night, and later on the BBC World channel. Suddenly they were reporting success and normality returning in Fallujah, Basra and even Baghdad. This was in contrast to The Independent’s report of less than two months ago on Fallujah! Of course we know what the Indie’s agenda is.

Yes, for most of yesterday’s fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, it was doom and gloom.

COUNTING THE DEAD

No-one is arguing that we should ignore the deaths in Iraq. But equally we should never fail to understand that most of them are NOT caused by the allied troops. The argument that the invasion fomented unrest is, in my humble opinion, facile. There is some merit in the fomenting argument, but the arguments are presented far too simplistically.

I believe that the various insurgency groups took advantage of the situation after Saddam was defeated in the 30 days’ war. And yet, I realise it is not easy to win the argument that leaving things as they were, with Saddam in place, would have resulted in even more deaths. We simply do not know that, despite his dreadful record over 30 long years of brutal dictatorship.

But the huge majority of dead in Iraq are down to the insurgents of Iraq and of other lands. We should never forget that.

SO DID THE COALITION DO NOTHING WRONG?

Of course not. There are some things which are pretty much inarguable:

1. Planning for the aftermath was inadequate, if even existent.

2. The Iraqi security forces, police and army should not have been disbanded.

3. The election may well have been called before the people and country were ready.

There are probably more, but the long and short of it is that those who were against the war in the first place will leap on any fact or figure to support their view, regardless of the “what-ifs”. And when they actually show REAL polling figures, they tend to qualify them with their own doubtful statements, as well as emphasising the negative figures. Such as – “most people want the Americans to go, but not yet until security is better.” (even if the figures are, say 55/45 wanting the US to go.) And reading between the lines, the criticism is clearly laid at the Americans for having failed thus far with security.

AND GUESS WHAT – THE WAR OPPONENTS HAVE A PROPENSITY TO LIE

Fond as they are of accusing western leaders of lying, the naysayers seem to do so blatantly. For instance, many say that “this war has lasted longer than the second world war.” (Huffington Post)

ABSOLUTE RUBBISH!

The Iraq war lasted just over one month, from March 20th to 1st May, 2003. The peace making under UN mandate has taken the rest of the time, and will take longer still. American troops are still in Germany, after 50 years. Do we still say that the USA is at war with Germany?

THE AMERICAN PRESS ARE AT IT, TOO!

On the reporting of “no direct connection” between Al Qaeda, Saddam & Bin-Laden. Inaccurate reporting.

“A much-publicized report released by the Pentagon last week details the extensive ties between the regime of Saddam Hussein and a wide variety of international terrorist organizations, including Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

“Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States,” the report’s authors at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) state.

But instead of reporting on this conclusion, most of the media accounts have focused on a single sentence that appears in the executive summary, stating that the report’s authors found “no smoking gun” or “direct connection” between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaida.

The United States Joint Forces Command, which commissioned the report from IDA, provided reporters late last week with a CD containing nearly 2,000 pages of supporting documents that purportedly formed the basis of the conclusions authored by Lt. Col. Kevin Woods and James Lacey in the 94-page redacted summary that initially was leaked to the press.”

Click here for Institute for Defense Analyses

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The Washington Institute’s thoughtful article here has some insight into fighting a militia war. I have re-assessed my earlier judgement on it, here. That’s one of the joys of blogging. Re-assessment!

Also read this – (on ‘Thoughts of a Conservative Christian’.)

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STAN ROSENTHAL’S EXCELLENT ARTICLE AT THE PROGRESSIVE SITE (& OTHER little MATTERS)

“In the period up to the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq the media have gone into overdrive to cover every angle of how wrong it all was. There have been Anniversary Specials in the magazines and broadsheets, daily reports from Baghdad, Ten Days to War (or should that be Ten Days of Anti-war Propaganda?) on Newsnight, a similar countdown to war on the Today programme, Iraq -The Betrayal and Battle for Haditha on Channel 4, The Iraq War by Numbers on ITV – the common theme being that the war was a total disaster. Everyone has had their say, the columnists, the presenters, the pundits, the politicians, and even individual Iraqis, singled out to fit in with the standpoint of the interviewer.

What had been missing from the many views expressed was some sort of reasonably reliable survey of how the Iraqis as a whole felt about the invasion five years on. After all it was they who were at the cutting edge of the operation. Last Monday BBC News remedied this deficiency by announcing the results of a poll of Iraqi opinion it had conducted in February along with ABC News and other broadcasters.”

Stan is a frequent commenter here and is someone who understands a lot better than most where today’s Labour party is coming from and where it should be going. Following the recent debate between Charles Clarke & John Trickett on the way forward for Labour – (there would never have been a need for this discussion right now if … well, you know the rest) – Stan puts his take on the debate at the Compass site.

Doesn’t look too hopeful for the Brown/Blairites, does it? But Stan’s contribution is well worth reading, as are other commenters there, (if you want to face up to the ongoing uphill task we face.)

The Newsnight coverage of the TEN DAYS TO WAR series, was an interesting ‘drama-factional’ mini-series. Apart from that, it was prejudice writ large. There was a clear message of political deceit, abuse of power, conscience of the honestly misled, hidden political intent and motives, the reality of threat and its perception.

That was their Series Plan. (It seems they are still getting over the Gilligan affair).

Loosely based on fact, sometimes it seemed VERY loosely based, I noticed that many of the real people involved at the time discounted the representations on the filming when interviewed afterwards. And the only night there was NOT a follow-up, the whole programme was to show how some GOOD young Muslim men had managed to dissuade another from becoming a suicide bomber! No interview afterwards with these young men! (Perhaps, to be fair, there was a security reason for this omission.)

But that particular programme had one aim only: to show that despite being goaded by the Evil UK Government’s actions towards a (natural, understandable & faith-based) reaction to blow up the innocent, they were by dint of the persuasion of the good guys in their midst able to step back from the brink. So unlike our own dear government, eh?

Check for yourself how balanced/unbalanced the BBC’s ‘Ten Days to War’ series was. It was technically done well, I concede, acted and directed persuasively, but many of its arguments were ripped apart when the real-life characters were interviewed by Paxman. The Newsnight feedback page provides some idea of how the public reacted to the series. Largely supportive, of course. What did you expect? Informed, disinterested opinion?

BLOGGERS UNITED

I suppose now that the anti-war bloggers have thrown all their best shots at the architects of the invasion, we might see another set of bloggers rising with their side of the arguments. There are two listed at the top of this page. Hot Air has a link on foreign fighters leaving Iraq in the USA Today article here.

There are more links to GOOD News at the foot of this page.

But back to the British Media

The British Press coverage of the Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion is no less than a travesty. I’m largely ignoring the printed press as their political bias can be taken for granted. But here’s some more of the BBC’s coverage.

1. BBC news report from John Simpson, World Affairs Director:

“Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 I have spent almost a year of my life here, reporting on the conflict.

More importantly, the war has shown the limits of American power. It is clear the United States can only manage to fight two small wars at a time.

Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the US armed forces almost to breaking point. America after the invasion of Iraq is no longer the superpower it was before.

Yet American resilience and inventive power seem to have turned the corner here, at least in military terms. Tactics which were losing the war have been abandoned, and new, more intelligent tactics have taken their place.

Now, the American forces are engaged in fighting a rearguard action, winning time during which the long-term decisions can be taken about withdrawal or some form of continuing presence here.”

2. And another one … on the BBC’s “This Week” last night:

Ragi Omar:

Said he was in Baghdad in 2003, and witnessed ‘shock and awe’, Ragi Omar saw the toppling of Saddam’s statue and the people’s celebrations. But now Iraq, he says, is a “broken and devastated society” as a result of the last five years. There are “checkpoints, barricades, freedom and democracy but no security.” The land is “plagued by violence and no-one can find an answer”.

He said that “the Arab people see the war on terror differently from those in the west.” He fears that American military interventionism is still being made as an argument to go into other places around the world, and insists that “they shouldn’t be allowed to succeed.”

So, who is going to stop them, Mr Omar? You and whose army?

Of course being against the invasion from the start, he believed at the time that nothing good was ever going to come of it.

Andrew Neil, the programme presenter, retorted that the recent survey shows that 55% of people overall think life is better now in Iraq, including 73% Kurds, 63% of Shias. The good Ragi said he does not believe those figures!!!

Andrew Neil, to his credit, made these points and put this question:

Is the media only reporting the bad news? Is it an accurate picture we are getting or just of parts of Baghdad and the Sunni triangle? After all the media can’t get around for most of the time, and the British military don’t often set foot in Basra.

Replies came there few from his panel, Omar, former Tory MP Michael Portillo and Labour MP Dianne Abbott.

Asked by Neil if it was an error in execution or in principle, Ravi Omar said it was in the execution, i.e. the dissolution of the Iraq state a month after Baghdad fell. He also blamed the White house for their “ideological straitjacket”, which tied Blair up too.

So, presumably, if the execution had been better planned and worked out better and sooner, Mr Omar would not have minded that they were wrong, in his opinion, to go in in the first place?

The British are now, according to Omar, a garrison force in Basra, and “out of it.” I wonder if the generals and troops who are training Basra’s army and police feel themselves “out of it”!?

Meanwhile some Sunnis in Iraq are rising against Al Qaeda. And Senator McCain, who might well be the next US president, says the surge IS working. The panel felt that the American people, with a new President in place, would wish to continue the occupation for as long as it takes, if the surge continues to work. Thus, the level of “strategic investment will be for 30/40/50 years.

RIGHT. AGREED.

So let’s get off the bashing America, Blair and the coalition forces hobby horse. It’s a long haul. We’re in it. Now let’s sort out tomorrow, and not yesterday.

And in the papers:

3. Daily Mirror – excerpt:

“It’s the anniversary that no one wants to celebrate – five years since the start of the Gulf War.”

Are they compelled to moan and groan and look for the bad news? Are they programmed to do this, even when the facts show that the news is predominately, comparatively good?

This Good News in Iraq site was dated September 8th 2007. It contains many links to good news sites.

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OUR MEDIA’S COLLECTIVE DEATH WISH

I still can’t quite decide why exactly we ignore, more or less, polls of IRAQI opinion. Is it that we see them as transitory? Don’t we believe them? Or do they simply contradict our own thoughts, feelings, prejudices or opinions?

I have to ask myself from time to time if our media has a collective death wish. Does encouragement of our enemies by the constant deriding of western political leaders’ judgement and decisions on this conflict, somehow make terrorists less likely to come after us? Not that we don’t deserve their pursuit of course. That’s why we exist, is it not? To bow and scrape before the victorious and high minded terrorists while blubbering our apologies on bended knees, before they decapitate us, figuratively or literally.

Is the press so naive as to think that counting the number of dead, most of whom, I repeat, have died at the hands of Iraqis or other nationals’ insurgents, is the ONLY valid criteria upon which to judge success of this mission?

Or are such as our body of united press just too proud to admit that in the end, western leaders will be proved to have been right?

Is the press pandering to the lowest common denominator – the pacifist? S/he who would have instinctively stood by Neville Chamberlain (and Hitler) in 1939.

Osama bin Laden video, threatening the European Union

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GOOD FRIDAY – 10 YEARS ON

How could we forget? Easy – if “WE” are the British press! The BBC has this report.

I expect some of the papers have mentioned it, but their prismed and jaundiced approach to anything thanking or praising Blair has turned me off even looking.

But it wasn’t ALL Blair, not by a long shot. This video praises Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, and his great contribution to the agreement.

Some of us haven’t forgotten that the one British politician who was constantly engaged over ten long years in this struggle to settle the decades long conflict was TONY BLAIR.

Northern Ireland Agreement, May 2007

Blair, 1998: “I feel the hand of history … I really do”

Yes, they laughed.

“A day like today is not a day for soundbites, we can leave those at home, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder with respect to this, I really do.”

They’re not laughing now.

Thank you, Mr Blair.

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• Watch bin Laden’s warning to the EU – anti Pope/anti-cartoons/anti-Saudi/anti-Blair
• View a shortened version of OBL video here
• Links between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda

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Click to visit Michael Yon’s extensive Middle East website

SOLDIERS BLOGS: http://www.blackfive.net/

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/milblogs/

http://www.soldiersperspective.us/

http://blackanthem.com/

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/

HUMANITARIAN MISSIONS BY TROOPS/LOCAL CHARITY ORGANISATIONS  

http://www.operationiraqichildren.org/

http://spiritofamerica.net/

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Tags: 1. Tony Blair, 5 years anniversary, bad news, baghdad, basra, bbc reports, britain, british army, Brown (Gordon Brown & his Labour Government, from June 2007), fallujah, five years of iraq, George Bush, good news, iraq war, newsnight, polls, troops, United States of America, usa