My Debate With MediaLens

Dear George

Hope all is well. In today's articleyou wrote, "[If] war turns out to be the only means of removing Saddam, then let us support a war whosesole and incontestable purpose is that and only that". Can you explain why you would prioritise thesupport of such a war ahead of a war to remove the Algerian generals, the Turkish regime, the Colombianregime, or maybe Putin? Would you also support a war to remove these regimes, if this turns out to be the onlyway?

Best wishes
David Edwards
MediaLens
26.11.02

Hi David,

Thanks for writing.

The other nations you mention have some, admittedly flimsy, domestic means of redress: in other words,being democracies, or nominal democracies, citizens can, in theory, remove them without recourse to violentmeans. There is no existing process within Iraq for removing the regime peacefully. Like many of those whooppose this war with Iraq, I also want to help the Iraqi people to shake off their dictator, and I feel I havea responsibility to do so, for two reasons.

The first is what I call the Empathetic Principle: that I would like others to be treated as I would wishto be treated myself. I would hate to live in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and if I did, I am sure I would wantpeople in other nations to help me to remove him and his apparatus of government.

The second is historical: we helped to put him there, and that seems to me to suggest that we have aspecial responsibility to try to get rid of him.

As I suggest in my article, we must try the non-violent means first, and there are plenty which have notbeen exhausted. But if all the conditions which I believe would provide the case for a just war are met -namely that less violent options have been exhausted first, that it reduces the sum total of violence in theworld, improves the lives of the oppressed, does not replace one form of oppression with another and has ahigh chance of success - then it seems to me that it would be right to seek to topple Mr Hussein by militarymeans.

If you read the introduction to my website, you'll seethat this is a position I have sought to derive from first principles: that we must always strive for theminimum of violence, which sometimes means using violence ourselves: "Political closure is inherentlyviolent, both because systems which deploy it violate the rights of most of the people they govern and becauseviolence is the only available means of challenging such systems. In these circumstances, the EmpatheticPrinciple instructs us to kill, if killing some thousands of the oppressing political class is the only meansof saving the lives of some tens of thousands of the oppressed."

What this means is that I believe that there is such a thing as a just war. I am also firmly of the opinionthat the current plans to invade Iraq constitute nothing of the sort.

With my best wishes,
George
26.11.02

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

November 27, 2002

MEDIA ALERT UPDATE: IRAQ - PANORAMA EDITOR AND GUARDIAN EDITOR RESPOND

As the war clouds continue to gather over the Gulf, the latest opinion polls show that fully 40% of theBritish electorate are against war on Iraq. Anyone who has been monitoring the media with any consistency canonly view these figures with horror. For the truth is that a majority of the British public is opposed tomilitary action despite the failure of the British media to tell them even the most elementary truths aboutIraq and its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). If the media had broken its self-imposed silence on the factsof how Iraq was almost completely disarmed of WMD by 1998, how any attempts to rearm would have beenimmediately detected by the West, how 250,000 Iraqis died in the last Gulf war, how countless thousands morewould die in the next, about how a million civilians have died under Western sanctions, and about how Bush'sadministration is packed with powerful arms and oil tycoons, then the proportion of the British peopleopposing war would surely have made UK participation in an assault unthinkable.

As it is, the biggest shift in public opinion since early November has been a rise of support for militaryaction from 32% to 39%. Voters are therefore split. This will be seen as a major triumph by the NewMachiavellians in Downing Street, as they have pumped the public remorselessly with blood-curdling tales offerries blasted to the bottom of the channel, of incinerated and gassed tube trains, of streets shimmeringwith the radioactive debris of 'dirty bombs'. Over the last three months, a majority of people haveconsistently opposed war, with one exception - the immediate aftermath of the Bali bombing. Terror, and meretalk of terror, stokes war fever, no matter who is responsible, as the government well knows. When asked aboutthe latest split in public opinion on war, rebel Labour MP, Glenda Jackson, said:

"That's pretty much understandable. We have also seen the government, quite deliberately in my view,attempting to blur the line between the activities of al-Qaeda and the seeming threat of Saddam Hussein."(Newsnight, BBC2, November 25, 2002)

You will struggle to find even a hint of this hidden agenda in journalistic reporting - journalists take itas read that their job is to echo the government's lines, not to read between them.

The media +has+ presented a semblance of a balance of views, but, crucially, there has been no balance incredibility. Since the vote on UN Resolution 1441 on November 8, the BBC and ITN have aired the opinions ofUS/UK government spokespeople, as we would expect, but as 'balance' they have turned to the same Iraqipoliticians demonised by the media for over a decade as a gang of liars and cut-throat murderers. This isconvenient indeed - were the media to offer a balance in credibility, not just argument, it would mean turningto the likes of Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, Scott Ritter, Noam Chomsky, and John Pilger - authoritativeand credible voices, whose arguments would carry great weight with the public, and which would quickly exposethe mendacity of the Bush/Blair camp, sending public support for war plummeting. When we think back to theVietnam era, do we recall spokespeople for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front 'balancing' the views ofthe US government? Or do we remember the voices of anti-war dissidents? The media has managed to obliteratethe obvious truth that home-grown peace movements are the credible opposition to home-grown war mongering -when violent dictators represent the cause of peace, that cause is effectively unrepresented, which is justfine by establishment interests.

It is one of the great, perennial ironies of propaganda that if power is to subordinate people to profit,then the public must be convinced of the essential virtue of power. Nothing is more important than that thisbasic understanding - communicated by associating power with religion, tradition, high culture, civility, andautomatic deference - continuously marinades society. The effects on the unmindful are remarkable - they cometo take the benevolence of power for granted without even realising that they do. Thus the decidedly unmindfulNick Cohen of the Observer can write:

"What opponents of the war against Iraq really mean is that American imperialism is worse thanSaddam's tyranny; that it's better to be against war than for the liberation of the peoples of Iraq."(Cohen, 'Put him behind you,' The Observer, November 24, 2002)

You can be sure that the last seven words were written quickly, reflexively, without thought - Saddam isbad, war is bad, but liberation justifies the pain. It is taken for granted that there really is a 'freeworld' awaiting the Iraqis, that liberation from a dictator like Saddam really does mean emergence into thesunlight of 'freedom'. It is unthinkable that cruise missiles and B52s could blitz the Iraqi people from oneunfree world into another. Billions of people around the planet are on hand to bear witness to this obviousreality, but high-tech propaganda is more than a match for them. Writing in the Guardian, George Monbiotdeclares:

"[I]f war turns out to be the only means of removing Saddam, then let us support a war whose sole andincontestable purpose is that and only that..." (Monbiot, 'See you in court, Tony,' The Guardian,November 26, 2002)

Monbiot would doubtless deny to his last breath that his support for an assault against just this shatteredThird World country as a last resort has anything to do with the ceaseless propaganda that has poured from thetireless cynics of the Bush/Blair administrations and their media commissars. He holds his views (+he+believes) because Iraq +is+ a special case, not because propaganda has +made+ Iraq seem a special case. Thisis the awesome power of deception - fascinating for everyone except the people on the end of our bombs.

The UK media is responsible for distorting public opinion to such an extent that Bush has managed to securea reasonably credible and supportive ally in the UK, so that Bush is therefore able to make war as part of amanufactured 'coalition'. If there is a war, the suffering of thousands of innocents will be on the hands ofthe editors and journalists of our 'liberal press'. Such a notion will seem utterly risible to them, ofcourse, but then an unshakeable belief in personal innocence has always been one of the privileges of power.

In response to our media alert of November 8, "OurPravda - The BBC, Panorama and Iraq", a number of Media Lens readers wrote to John Simpson and thePanorama team. Several readers made their own carefully constructed arguments, while others used the pro formaletter we suggested, as follows:

"Dear Mr Simpson,

In 'Saddam - A Warning From History' (November 3, 2002), you said that your aim was to see "whatlessons we can draw from Saddam Hussein's past conduct in order to discover what he is likely to do now". Why, in evaluating that conduct, did you fail to interview, or represent the views, of even one person who hasreported that the Iraqi regime cooperated in delivering fully 90-95% disarmament of its weapons of massdestruction (WMD) by December 1998? Why did you not interview, or report the views of, those who claim the USmanufactured a crisis in December 1998 for cynical reasons, and perhaps because they did not want sanctions toend successfully? Why did you not report that any attempt to reconstitute Iraq's WMD programmes would beimmediately detectable to Western technology? Why did you argue that the Gulf War did not produce a"terrible loss of life", when a quarter of a million Iraqis died in the conflict, and 47,000children under five died as an indirect result in the first eight months of 1991 alone? Why did you use just16 words to comment on Western responsibility for the one million civilians who have died as a result ofsanctions, according to senior UN diplomats who resigned in protest? Why did use the past tense whendiscussing sanctions? Why did you limit your interviews almost entirely to US and UK government officials,intelligence operatives, and to Iraqi defectors? Why did you not warn viewers of the past record of Iraqidefectors in distorting the truth to secure media attention and support? Why did you not include interviewswith Scott Ritter, Denis Halliday or Hans von Sponeck?"

In response, several Media Lens readers received the following from Panorama editor Mike Robinson on, oraround, November 14:

"Thank you for your email concerning the Panorama programme, "Saddam - A Warning FromHistory", broadcast on 3rd November 2002. Your comments, along with those of others who have visited theMedia Lens web-site, have been noted by John Simpson who was the reporter on the film and passed on to me fora response. The film dealt with Saddam Hussein's pursuit and retention of power, from his boyhood in Tikrit tothe present day. We looked at certain key moments in his life in order to judge how he might behave if facedwith military action in the near future. We stand by the programme in its entirety. We remain committed tofair coverage of world affairs - as well as home affairs - and, as you will be aware, we have covered a broadrange of views on Iraq during the present run of Panorama, not to mention in series past. Over the years,these range from "Secrets, Spies and Videotape", Tom Mangold 's film on the UNSCOM weaponsinspection programme in Iraq which investigated whether the inspectors had been fatally compromised by theinvolvement of United States intelligence agencies (broadcast in March 1999), to "The Case AgainstSaddam" (broadcast 23rd Sept 2002) and "The Case Against War" (planned transmission, 8th Dec2002). Many thanks for your interest and comments.

Yours sincerely
Mike Robinson
Editor Panorama"

We appreciate Mike Robinson taking the time to respond. However, we note that Robinson does not address+any+ of the substantive points made by readers, or by our media alert of November 8, but states merely,"We stand by the film in its entirety."

This is a standard 'free press' response when challenged: feel free to refuse to engage with any of thereasoned points made. Instead describe what the programme was about, and simply assert one's 'impartiality','broad coverage' and 'fairness' (see our media alert of October 3: "TheBBC's robotic assertion of 'impartiality'").

Robinson claims that the BBC has "covered a broad range of views on Iraq". In reality, of course,the overwhelming proportion of coverage has presented US-UK establishment views. Meanwhile, as discussedabove, the views of many rational and authoritative commentators are clearly considered unfit for publicconsumption. It is worth noting that Tom Mangold, the Panorama reporter mentioned by Robinson, recentlyrepeated the pivotal establishment lie that "in 1998, Saddam kicked them [the weapons inspectors] allout". ('How Saddam hid his deadly bio arsenal,' The Times, September 13, 2002).

Meanwhile, on 15 November, Media Lens received an email from The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger. Thiswas in response to readers' emails generated by our media alerts Iraq - the Big Lie (Parts 1and 2), of October 28 and29, respectively:

"Thanks for your email - one of several generated in response to a medialens appeal. I'm afraid wecan't answer every point individually.

Ed Pilkington, foreign editor of the Guardian, makes this comment by way of general response.

"We have referred, and will continue to refer, to the US government's abuse of arms inspections forspying purposes. If new information emerges about such activities, we will of course report it with dueprominence.

There is a detailed debate surrounding the subject of why the arms inspectors withdrew in 1998. Some formerinspectors such as Scott Ritter say a prime cause was the spying issue. Others such as Richard Butler andCharles Duelfer say the main factor was Iraqi obstruction. News journalism imposes brevity upon us; we cannotrehearse this detailed debate every time we refer to the suspension of inspections in 1998.

To say that the inspectors left Iraq following Iraqi complaints of CIA spying is wholly accurate. MediaLens accuses the Guardian of being biased because it quotes a senior Iraqi official accusing the US of spyingthrough the arms inspectors. The fact that we offer no comment on his accusations is regarded by Media Lens asevidence of slant on our part. The truth is quite the contrary - we reported the Iraqi officials wordsaccurately, and they speak for themselves. We are not in the business of editorialising our newsreports."

Alan Rusbridger
Editor"

In fact the Guardian has given a tiny number of mentions of CIA infiltration of inspectors and has evenless often drawn conclusions on the significance of the infiltration for determining Iraqi reluctance to allowthe return of inspectors. We are pleased that the Guardian will report any new information, but we would alsowelcome the reporting of relevant old information, which had previously been reported by the Guardian itself.It truly speaks volumes for the Guardian that it is willing to suggest that the views of Ritter and Butler areof comparable credibility. However, we recall that even Butler had given Iraq a clean bill of health on WMDprior to the concocted crisis of late 1998. Media Lens readers will recognise the "brevity"/lack ofspace argument from earlier Media Alerts.In fact it turns out that there is plenty of space for establishmentviews of the most mendacious kind, but almost none for dissident views.