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Adventures
in Media Surreality – Part 1
Blair’s
Serious and Current Lies
by
David Edwards and Media Lens
Dissident Voice
August
19, 2003
Mrs
Hardy: “And how is Mrs Laurel?”
Stanley:
“Oh, fine thank you.”
Mrs
Hardy: “I’d love to meet her some time.”
Stanley:
“Neither do I, too.”
(Laurel
and Hardy, Chickens Come Home, 1931)
The War On Truth
At
the heart of mainstream journalism there is a remarkable collision between the
human capacity for reason and the corporate media need to accommodate the harsh
realities of profit-maximising in state capitalist society. Journalists are not
stupid, some things are obvious, but some things just cannot be said in a
system that has evolved precisely to protect powerful interests. The resulting
compromised media performance is often surreal in a way that recalls the Laurel
and Hardy dialogue above.
In
March of this year, Tony Blair went to war on Iraq in the face of immense
public opposition at home and abroad. In 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001, Blair had
next to nothing to say about a threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction (WMD), or about an urgent need to respond to such a threat. In
October 2001, for example, Blair's official spokesman dismissed suggestions
that splits were developing between the US and the UK over whether military
action should be extended from Afghanistan to Iraq: "Such an extension was
being proposed only by 'fringe voices' in the US", Blair's spokesman was
reported as saying. ('Blair: we know the game you are playing', Matthew
Tempest, The Guardian, October 11, 2001)
Later
that month, when asked if there would be a "wider war" against Iraq
after the attack on Afghanistan, Blair answered that this would depend on proof
of Iraqi complicity in the September 11 attacks:
"I
think what people need before we take action against anyone is evidence."
('Blair on the war: the Observer interview in full', The Observer, October 14,
2001)
That
same month Blair talked of the need for "absolute evidence" of Iraqi
complicity in September 11. Again, the ‘threat’ of Iraqi WMD was not yet the
issue. (Michael White, 'Blair goes public to quell Arab fears of wider war',
The Guardian, October 11, 2001)
One
month later, Blair literally stood shoulder to shoulder with President Jacques
Chirac of France at a press conference as they "reaffirmed their demand
for 'incontrovertible evidence' of Iraqi complicity in the attacks on America
before they could endorse US threats to extend the anti-terrorist campaign to
Baghdad". ('Blair and Chirac cool on taking war to Iraq,' Hugo Young and
Michael White, The Guardian, November 30, 2001)
Then,
in December 2001, the press began reporting that the US had made the decision
to attack Iraq. The Observer wrote:
"America
intends to depose Saddam Hussein by giving armed support to Iraqi opposition
forces across the country, The Observer has learnt... The plan, opposed by Tony
Blair and other European Union leaders, threatens to blow apart the
increasingly shaky international consensus behind the US-led 'war on
terrorism'." (‘Secret US plan for Iraq war, Bush orders backing for rebels
to topple Saddam’, Peter Beaumont, Ed Vulliamy and Paul Beaver, The Observer,
December 2, 2001)
A
European military source who had recently returned from talks with US military
chiefs responsible for the plan said:
"The
Americans are walking on water. They think they can do anything at the moment
and there is bloody nothing Tony [Blair] can do about it." (Ibid)
By
February 2002, Blair’s tune had changed. On February 28, Blair said:
"We
do constantly look at Iraq ... Saddam Hussein's regime is a regime that is
deeply repressive to its people and is a real danger to the region.
"Heavens
above, he used chemical weapons against his own people, so it is an issue and
we have got to look at it, but we will look at it in a rational and calm way,
as we have for the other issues.
"The
accumulation of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq poses a threat, a threat
not just to the region but to the wider world, and I think George Bush was
absolutely right to raise it. Now what action we take in respect of that, that
is an open matter for discussion..." ('Blair edges closer to Iraqi
strike', Matthew Tempest, The Guardian, February 28, 2002)
As
war became a certainty for everyone but the media, the government was hit by
the largest ever rebellion in the Commons and by the largest ever protest march
in London on February 15. In December 2002, the Pew global attitudes project
revealed that when asked if Saddam Hussein should be removed by force 71% said
no in Germany, 64% in France and 79% in Russia. In Turkey - a major US ally -
83% were opposed to the use of Turkish bases for an attack on Iraq. In Britain
47% said no. In February, a few weeks before war broke out, 75% of the Spanish
population was opposed to war. In Portugal 53% were opposed to war under any
circumstances, with 96% opposed to war by the US and its allies unilaterally.
In Britain 40% were opposed to war under any circumstances, with fully 90%
opposed to war by the US and its allies unilaterally.
In
January of this year, Blair said:
"Sometimes
the job of the prime minister is to say things people don't want them to say
but we believe are necessary to say because the threat is real and, if we don't
deal with it, the consequences of our weakness will haunt future
generations." (Michael White and Julian Borger, 'Blair wins time with
bravura Iraq speech', The Guardian, January 16, 2003)
In
a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman in February, Blair was keen to point out
that in voicing such concerns he was merely responding to evidence supplied by
his intelligence services:
“Well
what there was, was evidence, I mean this is what our intelligence services are
telling us and it's difficult because, you know, either they're simply making
the whole thing up or this is what they are telling me, as the prime minister,
and I've no doubt what the American intelligence are telling President Bush as
well.” (Tony Blair on Newsnight - part one, The Guardian, February 7, 2003)
Taking Away The Case For War
Unfortunately
for Blair, interviews between the late weapons expert David Kelly and three
different BBC journalists revealed the extraordinary extent to which Blair and
his aides have deceived the country. Kelly was a leading expert on WMD who had
an office in defence intelligence, reviewed the September dossier, and in
internal appraisals is described as a world-renowned expert on chemical and
biological weapons. As Kelly pointed out to the BBC’s Susan Watts, the
government claimed that the Iraqis possessed “a vast arsenal”. Was this “what
our intelligence services are telling us”, as Blair insisted? Kelly reported:
“I’m
not sure any of us ever said that.” (Susan Watts’ tape transcript, ‘A statement
popped up and was seized on’, The Guardian, August, 14, 2003)
This
was how Kelly described Blair’s “serious and current” threat:
“The
problem was that one could anticipate that without any form of
inspection, and that forms a real deterrence, other than the sanctions side of
things, then that [a threat] would develop. I think this was the real concern
that everyone had, it was not so much what [the Iraqis] have now but what they
would have in the future. But that unfortunately wasn’t expressed strongly in
the dossier because that takes away the case for war... to a certain extent...”
(Ibid)
Kelly
was here clearly stating that “the real concern that everyone” in the
intelligence community had was that the Iraqis might present a threat
in the future.
This
is an astonishing expose because it suggests that the idea of a “serious and
current” threat was a government fabrication that cannot even be dignified with
the word ‘spin’. Kelly also revealed that the government was “desperate for
information” and that concerns about claims of an Iraqi threat were impossible
to convey because “people at the top of the ladder” did not want to hear them.
An
email from Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, to John Scarlett, chairman
of the joint intelligence committee, on September 17, 2002, one week before the
“dodgy dossier” was published, supports Kelly’s claim:
“The
document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat
from Saddam Hussein... We will need to make it clear in launching the document
that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat.” (BBC1
News at Six, August 18, 2003)
A
week later, Blair wrote in the foreword to the final version of the same
document:
“I
am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current.” (‘Iraq's Weapons of
Mass Destruction - The assessment of the British Government’, http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp)
The
Hutton inquiry - set up to investigate events surrounding David Kelly’s
apparent suicide has also revealed that at least two more members of the
defence intelligence staff, including "probably the most senior and
experienced intelligence community official" working on weapons of mass
destruction, expressed concerns about the "level of certainty" of the
claims made in the government's dossier. They also expressed concerns about the
claim that the Iraqis could deploy WMD within 45 minutes of an order being
given to use them. (‘Beyond doubt: facts amid the fiction‘, Vikram Dodd,
Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, August 16, 2003)
In
his foreword to the “dodgy dossier”, Tony Blair wrote:
“And
the document discloses that his [Saddam’s] military planning allows for some of
the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.” (Blair, op.,
cit)
Blair
also wrote that Iraq had “military plans for the use of chemical and biological
weapons, including against his own Shia population. Some weapons are deployable
within 45 minutes”.
And:
“Intelligence
indicates the Iraqi military is able to deploy chemical or biological weapons
within 45 minutes of an order to do so.”
What
was the source of this dramatic claim repeated three times by Blair himself in
his foreword?
A
document released to the Hutton inquiry reveals that the claim was nothing more
than second hand hearsay. The document describes how the 45 minute claim
"’came from a reliable and established source, quoting a well-placed
senior officer’ - described by intelligence sources as a senior Iraqi officer
still in Iraq.” (‘45-minute claim on Iraq was hearsay’, Vikram Dodd, Nicholas
Watt and Richard Norton Taylor, The Guardian, August 16, 2003)
On
June 4, Tony Blair told the House of Commons:
"It
was alleged that the source for the 45 minute claim was an Iraqi defector of
dubious reliability. He was not an Iraqi defector and he was an established and
reliable source."
But
in reality he was a source merely reporting what he claims he had heard someone
else say. The irony, of course, is that the government launched a fierce attack
on the BBC for broadcasting allegations that a government dossier was
"sexed up" based on a single, anonymous, uncorroborated source
David Kelly.
On
June 4, the BBC's Newsnight programme reported that what we now know was second
hand hearsay itself only referred to the length of time it might have taken the
Iraqis to fuel and fire a Scud missile, or to load and fire a multiple rocket
launcher about 45 minutes. The original intelligence said nothing about
whether Iraq possessed the chemical or biological weapons to use in weapons
loaded in this period of time. In short, the government turned a purely
hypothetical danger based on second hand uncorroborated evidence into an
immediate and deadly threat to justify war.
All
of this fits with much that we have heard and seen before, during and since the
war. The fact that the intelligence services deemed the Iraqi threat merely
theoretical, not actual, explains the complete failure to find any WMD in Iraq.
It tallies with claims of senior UNSCOM weapons inspectors that Iraq had been
90-95% “fundamentally disarmed” by December 1998. The government’s desperation
for information accords with claims made by former cabinet minister, Robin
Cook, describing how "there was a selection of evidence to support a
conclusion... intelligence was not being used to inform and shape policy, but
to shape policy that was already settled", with contradictory evidence
being ignored. (Patrick Wintour, 'Blair's secret war pact', The Guardian, June
18, 2003) It also tallies with Former cabinet minister, Clare Short’s claim
that Tony Blair is guilty of "honourable deception", that he
knowingly deceived the cabinet and country.
If
we are able to face up to the obvious facts, then some very simple and very
ugly conclusions simply have to be drawn: the Bush administration decided, for
political not security reasons, to invade and occupy Iraq using a non-existent
threat as a pretext. Blair, for his own political reasons, decided to go along
with Bush. Both governments then set out to deceive their people using a
“serious and current” threat that did not exist in order to generate the
necessary support for war.
There
never was an Iraqi threat. War was not necessary; a political solution could
have been reached. British troops did not need to die. American troops did not
need to die. Iraqi troops and civilians did not need to die. Journalists did
not need to die. Iraq did not need to be subjected to yet another shattering
military assault, to political turmoil, guerrilla warfare, chaos and looting.
Iraq did not need to be subjected to further bombardment by cluster bombs and
depleted uranium. If Tony Blair and George W. Bush are not guilty of war crimes,
who is?
Surreal Conclusions and Ultimate Ironies
All
of this is now in the public domain. So what conclusions have the media drawn
in response?
Summarising
last week’s events, an Independent editorial notes: “it could be said that we
learned more in a week about the workings of this government than in the
previous six years of its existence. It has not emerged with unalloyed credit.”
(Leader, ‘A surprisingly bright light has been shone upon the workings of
government and the BBC’, The Independent, August 16, 2003)
We
might be forgiven for imagining that this is intended ironically, it is surely
an attempt at black humour ahead of a forthright demand for the resignation of
Blair and his close aides on the grounds that they are responsible for mass
death based on mass deception. Instead, the Independent’s editors continue:
“It
is relatively simple to identify the principal loser: the Secretary of State
for Defence, Geoff Hoon. Of course Mr Hoon has yet to present his side of the
story. But it is difficult to see how he can reasonably justify his decision to
overrule the strong advice of his permanent secretary, Kevin Tebbit, that Dr
Kelly should not be made to appear before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee
as well as the Intelligence and Security Committee.”
In
other words, because the Hutton inquiry was set up to investigate the
circumstances surrounding the death of one man, the fact that the inquiry has
helped confirm that the government has killed and mutilated tens of thousands
of men, women and children in Iraq in an illegal war based on completely
fraudulent pretexts, is somehow not the prime issue of concern.
This
is a perfect example of our media’s fundamental insanity and this is not too
strong a word to use that is seen time and again. It is an institutional
insanity that is rooted in the fact that the media is part of the establishment
reporting on the establishment. Noam Chomsky explains:
"The
basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements
of power and privilege does not exist." (Chomsky, Deterring Democracy,
Hill and Wang, New York, 1992, p.79)
In
the Guardian, Vikram Dodd, Richard Norton-Taylor, Nicholas Watt and Matt Wells
review the political fortunes of the key players:
“Tony
Blair
From
the comfort of his Barbados beach, the prime minister will be unsettled to hear
that he was invoked in the first week of hearings when the inquiry was told
that he called for Dr Kelly to face extra questioning. The issue of whether Mr
Blair was involved in unmasking Dr Kelly - which would throw him into dangerous
political waters - will become clearer next week.
“Alastair
Campbell
On
a personal level Mr Campbell's reputation was damaged by his stream of letters
of complaint to the BBC, which suggest he has joined the green ink brigade. But
his central reason for taking on the BBC - that it was a "lie" to
claim that he personally inserted the 45-minute claim - has yet to be proven.”
(‘Reputations saved or shattered? How the main players have fared’, Vikram
Dodd, Richard Norton-Taylor, Nicholas Watt and Matt Wells, The Guardian, August
16, 2003)
Again,
at a time when Blair and his cohorts have been shown to have manufactured an
actual threat out of a potential threat in order to take us to war, the major
concern is that Blair may be shown to have been involved in unmasking Kelly. This
compromised the welfare of one man the fact that Blair’s actions helped
plunge millions of Iraqis into chaos, suffering, injury and death is somehow of
secondary importance.
The
Observer’s editors write merely:
“The
Hutton inquiry has offered a riveting insight into the internal workings of two
major British institutions - the BBC and Ministry of Defence. Neither has
emerged with credit, revelations of their behind-the-scenes machinations
sitting uneasily with their earlier public protestations of integrity.
“Yet
both institutions have at least had the courage to come clean before the
demands of the Hutton inquiry and provide any internal communications that
might illuminate the circumstances of the death of David Kelly... (‘A long
overdue searchlight, Hutton can ensure the truth will out’, Leader, The
Observer, August 17, 2003)
The
Independent on Sunday writes:
“The
death of a senior weapons expert and the conspicuous absence of WMD in Iraq
have resulted in a lamentable loss of credibility for Tony Blair. The Prime
Minister must face the Hutton inquiry and answer its questions with the
openness and transparency on which he so prides himself. Only then will he
regain the trust of the British people that he has so recklessly squandered.”
(‘The case is damning. It must be answered’, Leader, The Independent, August
17, 2003)
When
foreign enemies illegally invade sovereign nations, killing and wounding
thousands for cynical reasons, diplomacy and debate are not on the agenda. Talk
of openness and transparency, of trust earned and squandered, is dismissed out
of hand as the troops are mobilised and the bombers made ready. The media talk
is of war crimes tribunals, of ‘resolve’ and ‘determination’ in the face of ‘dire
threats to international law’. On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, the
Independent’s editors wrote:
“[I]t
is not just the future of a small state, Kuwait, that is at stake, or the power
of one of the world’s most ruthless dictators, but the basis of the future
world order.” (‘Failure to stop dictators bears a higher price than war’,
Leader, The Independent, January 16, 1991)
When
the crimes are by our own people, a little transparency and openness is all
that is required.
On
the same day in January 1991, the Financial Times wrote:
“Britain’s
willingness to wage war in the Gulf is based not only on calculations of
national interest” but on the understanding that it is “necessary to protect
civilised values.” After all, “the British know in their bones that aggressors
must not be appeased”. (‘The British contribution’, Financial Times, January
16, 1991)
Today,
cabinet whistleblowers, intelligence service whistleblowers, UN whistleblowers,
expert and credible testimony, unavoidable facts and irrefutable arguments -
all point to the commission of vast war crimes and the ruthless subversion of
democracy threatening “civilised values” by our very own leaders. And the
media’s response to these facts, and to the understanding, in our bones, that
“aggressors must not be appeased”?
“Neither
do I, too!”
In
1999, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland reflected on the failure of the Serbian
people to bring their war criminals to account. Today, the irony of what he
wrote is as perfect as it is painful:
“Future
historians will spend long hours and write fat books working out this
phenomenon. Why have the Serbs not risen in outrage at the unspeakable horrors
committed in their name?... the likeliest explanation is that the Serbs know -
and refuse to know. That, like so many oppressor nations before them, they are
in a state of collective denial.” (Jonathan Freedland, ‘A long war requires
patience, not a search for the door marked “Exit”’, The Guardian, April 14,
1999)
David Edwards is the editor of Media Lens, and the author of Burning All
Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (South End
Press, 1996). Email: editor@medialens.org. Visit the Media
Lens website: http://www.MediaLens.org
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote
rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to
journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and
non-abusive tone.
Write to Alan Rusbridger, editor of the
Guardian:
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Write to Simon Kelner, editor of The
Independent:
Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk
Write to Tristan Davies, editor of The
Independent on Sunday:
Email: t.davies@independent.co.uk
Write to Richard Sambrook, director of
BBC news:
Email: richard.sambrook@bbc.co.uk
Write to ITN's head of news gathering,
Jonathan Munro:
Email: jonathan.munro@itn.co.uk
Feel free to respond to Media Lens
alerts: editor@medialens.org
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and Media Lens
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