Post by Teddy Bear on Mar 19, 2013 18:23:42 GMT
When I saw this article yesterday, I had to wonder at the BBC motive:
I suppose it keeps attention away from their own wrongdoings and makes them appear moral and upright to the ignorant by bringing 'new evidence' to the table.
The only problem is 'their evidence' is flawed.
Iraq anniversary: war intelligence 'was a lie', BBC Panorama documentary to say
Key intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq ten years ago was based on "fabrication" and "wishful thinking", a documentary is to claim.
I suppose it keeps attention away from their own wrongdoings and makes them appear moral and upright to the ignorant by bringing 'new evidence' to the table.
The only problem is 'their evidence' is flawed.
The BBC just cannot accept that Iraq is a better place without Saddam Hussein
By Con Coughlin
It's pathetic, really. Ten years after the successful military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the BBC simply cannot accept that, by removing the Iraqi tyrant, we helped to liberate the Iraqi people from decades of tyranny.
This morning John Humphrys, who never makes any attempt to hide his visceral opposition to the conflict, was at it again, trying to persuade the British ambassador to Iraq that the country was in a far worse place today than it was under Saddam. Really? Did Iraq have a democratic process under Saddam? Were people free to express their beliefs without fear of being carted off to one of Saddam's torture chambers?
Of course the post-Saddam administration of the country – in contrast to the successful military campaign – was a disaster: we all know and accept that. But to persist with the notion that Iraq was better off under Saddam is not just perverse – it is a wilful distortion of the truth – which is not the sort of approach we should tolerate from a publicly funded media organisation.
Similarly Peter Taylor's Panorama programme last night was also guilty of a major distortion of the facts. One of Taylor's main arguments was that the war to remove Saddam could have been averted if we'd listened to the claims of Iraq's foreign minister and intelligence chief that Saddam did not have any WMD.
And why, pray, should we take seriously the claims of men who, throughout the whole of the 1990s, consistently lied and misled the world about Saddam's various WMD capabilities? Has the BBC forgotten that, because of Saddam's consistent refusal to comply with the terms of the ceasefire agreement he signed at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, we were basically at war with Iraq throughout the 1990s, with RAF fighters regularly coming under attack from Saddam's forces as they sought to impose a no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq?
Taylor's programme contained excellent interviews with the various Iraqi spies who provided misleading evidence about Saddam's WMD capabilities. But while we were encouraged to discount their accounts, Taylor argues we should have listened to another group of congenital liars instead, the only difference being that the latter group fits in with the BBC's institutional philosophy – that anything to do with the Iraq war is bad and should be condemned.
It is sad, really, that the BBC is indulging in the same kind of institutional "group think" that led our spies to convince themselves that Saddam had WMD in the first place. Indeed – something neither Humphreys nor Taylor care to mention – Saddam freely admitted in his interview to the Iraq Survey Group after his capture that, although he had put many of his WMD systems into cold storage, he fully intended to reconstitute them again the moment the sanctions regime collapsed, and he was no longer subject to a regime of international inspections.
As I said at the time – and say again – the person most responsible for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was Saddam Hussein.
If, during the course of more than a decade, he had made any serious attempt to cooperate with the numerous teams of weapons inspectors who visited Baghdad, then military action may well have been avoided.
But Saddam was not only defiant, he also deliberately misled the world into believing he had WMD, which, in retrospect, was a very stupid thing to do. For had he complied with the inspectors' demands, he would in all probability still be in power today. And John Humphrys would be bleating why oh why isn't the West doing something to rid the world of this evil dictator.
But, as is the case with the BBC's institutional support for the global warming lobby, don't expect it to provide anything approaching balanced coverage of the Iraq issue.
The organisation simply cannot accept the inconvenient truths about the real causes of the Iraq war.
By Con Coughlin
It's pathetic, really. Ten years after the successful military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the BBC simply cannot accept that, by removing the Iraqi tyrant, we helped to liberate the Iraqi people from decades of tyranny.
This morning John Humphrys, who never makes any attempt to hide his visceral opposition to the conflict, was at it again, trying to persuade the British ambassador to Iraq that the country was in a far worse place today than it was under Saddam. Really? Did Iraq have a democratic process under Saddam? Were people free to express their beliefs without fear of being carted off to one of Saddam's torture chambers?
Of course the post-Saddam administration of the country – in contrast to the successful military campaign – was a disaster: we all know and accept that. But to persist with the notion that Iraq was better off under Saddam is not just perverse – it is a wilful distortion of the truth – which is not the sort of approach we should tolerate from a publicly funded media organisation.
Similarly Peter Taylor's Panorama programme last night was also guilty of a major distortion of the facts. One of Taylor's main arguments was that the war to remove Saddam could have been averted if we'd listened to the claims of Iraq's foreign minister and intelligence chief that Saddam did not have any WMD.
And why, pray, should we take seriously the claims of men who, throughout the whole of the 1990s, consistently lied and misled the world about Saddam's various WMD capabilities? Has the BBC forgotten that, because of Saddam's consistent refusal to comply with the terms of the ceasefire agreement he signed at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, we were basically at war with Iraq throughout the 1990s, with RAF fighters regularly coming under attack from Saddam's forces as they sought to impose a no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq?
Taylor's programme contained excellent interviews with the various Iraqi spies who provided misleading evidence about Saddam's WMD capabilities. But while we were encouraged to discount their accounts, Taylor argues we should have listened to another group of congenital liars instead, the only difference being that the latter group fits in with the BBC's institutional philosophy – that anything to do with the Iraq war is bad and should be condemned.
It is sad, really, that the BBC is indulging in the same kind of institutional "group think" that led our spies to convince themselves that Saddam had WMD in the first place. Indeed – something neither Humphreys nor Taylor care to mention – Saddam freely admitted in his interview to the Iraq Survey Group after his capture that, although he had put many of his WMD systems into cold storage, he fully intended to reconstitute them again the moment the sanctions regime collapsed, and he was no longer subject to a regime of international inspections.
As I said at the time – and say again – the person most responsible for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was Saddam Hussein.
If, during the course of more than a decade, he had made any serious attempt to cooperate with the numerous teams of weapons inspectors who visited Baghdad, then military action may well have been avoided.
But Saddam was not only defiant, he also deliberately misled the world into believing he had WMD, which, in retrospect, was a very stupid thing to do. For had he complied with the inspectors' demands, he would in all probability still be in power today. And John Humphrys would be bleating why oh why isn't the West doing something to rid the world of this evil dictator.
But, as is the case with the BBC's institutional support for the global warming lobby, don't expect it to provide anything approaching balanced coverage of the Iraq issue.
The organisation simply cannot accept the inconvenient truths about the real causes of the Iraq war.