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<P><B><FONT face=Times color=#cc3300 size=6 roman,times,serif="" new="">How To
Silence An Awkward Newspaper</FONT></B> <BR></TD></TR><TR><TD align="center"
valign="top"><B><FONT face=Arial color=#cc3300 size=4>by John Pilger</FONT></B>
<BR><FONT face=Arial color=#4c4c4c size=2><B>May 28, 2004</B></FONT> </P>
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<TD vAlign=top><FONT face=Arial size=1><A
href="http://www.zmag.org/terrorframe.htm">TERROR WAR
</A></FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>The editor of the Daily Mirror, <?xml:namespace prefix =
st1 /><st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region>'s most famous
mass-circulation newspaper, was sacked because he ran the only
English-language popular paper to expose the "war on terror" as a fraud and
the invasion of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> as a crime. He was marked long
before the Mirror published the notorious, apparently faked pictures of
British troops torturing Iraqi prisoners.<?xml:namespace prefix = o
/><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>On 4 July 2002, American Independence Day, the Mirror
published a report of mine, displayed on the front page under the headline
"Mourn on the Fourth of July" and showing Bush flanked by the Stars and
Stripes.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Above him were the words: "George W Bush's policy of bomb
first and find out later has killed double the number of civilians who died on
11 September. The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">USA</st1:country-region></st1:place> is now the world's leading
rogue state". It was the Mirror at its most potent; not since it distinguished
itself as the first mass-circulation paper in the western world to oppose the
<st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> invasion of
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region> and, before that,
the British invasion of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Suez</st1:place></st1:city>, had it confronted the rapacious
policies of a British government and its principal ally. Most of the Western
media were then consumed and manipulated by the fake issue of
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s non-existent weapons of mass
destruction: "45 minutes from attack", said the London Evening Standard front
page; "He's got 'em... let's get him", said the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city>
Sun.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>In contrast, the Mirror reported that Bush and Blair were
lying, that the "liberation" of <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> had installed warlords as barbaric
as the Taliban, that US forces had killed almost double the number of
civilians killed in the twin towers on 11 September 2001, and that the coming
invasion of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> had been long planned. It was
certainly not the first to say this, but it made sense of it for a popular
readership.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>The day after the "mourn on the Fourth of July" piece was
published, a senior executive of the New York investment company Tweedy
Browne, major shareholders in the Trinity Mirror newspaper group, called the
Mirror and shouted down the phone at senior management, demanding Morgan's
head and mine. This pressure continued as the Murdoch press in the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">United
States</st1:country-region></st1:place> and other lunar right-wing papers and
broadcasters railed against the "treacherous" Mirror. When, on 1 May last, the
Mirror published its "torture" photographs, Tweedy Browne again led the charge
of powerful shareholders, notably Fidelity Asset Management, the biggest
mutual company in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>, run by the billionaire
Edward C Johnson III, a donor to the Bush re-election campaign. "We will have
to look very carefully," said an executive of Deutsche Asset Management,
another shareholder, "at what Trinity Mirror does next in order to protect the
value of the Mirror brand." Was corporate influence on the press, and its
right to be wrong, ever more eloquently expressed? Morgan had only just
survived a year earlier when a new Trinity Mirror senior management under the
chief executive, Sly Bailey, ordered him to "tone down" the anti-war coverage
and return the paper to celebrities and faithless royal butlers (who had never
departed). In the following months, the Mirror, along with the other anti-war
daily newspaper in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place>, the Independent, was
vindicated. Today, Bush and Blair are universally distrusted and reviled, and
the defeat of their atrocious enterprise seems
assured.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>In bringing this truth to the public, the Mirror departed
from the pack as no popular paper has, and the part it played ought not to be
buried in the mire of the British tabloid world. For two years, the Mirror
represented a majority of the British people, whose critical understanding of
Blair's pre-invasion charade was always ahead of journalists'. The Mirror did
what a newspaper is meant to do: it kept the record straight. Instead of
channelling and amplifying official lies, the Mirror more often than not
challenged and exposed them to a readership often dismissed or patronised by
those claiming to know what "the public really wants".
<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Since Morgan's departure, no newspaper has demanded that
the Ministry of Defence produce the "incontrovertible evidence" that the
Mirror's photographs were faked. The hearsay and apologetics of a regiment
with a documented record of brutality in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
facing at least five murder prosecutions, have been accepted. If the Mirror
was stitched up, was it merely for money? Instead of pursuing that, as the
editors of MediaLens website point out, "a cowed media lined up to heap
invective on the sacked editor and to declare the decision 'correct',
'necessary', 'inevitable'".<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>The BBC, having got rid of the one reporter, Andrew
Gilligan, who caught out Blair, and having duly disported itself before the
whitewashing Hutton inquiry, allowed Andrew Neil to dominate its news of
Morgan's sacking with an attack on the Mirror's "very slanted and skewed
journalism" - and this from a former Murdoch editor, a caricature who waved
his champagne glass at 5,000 men sacked by his master, whose scurrilous London
Sunday Times smear campaigns included the notorious campaign against the
current affairs programme Death on the Rock, which had lifted a veil on the
secret British state and its
terrorism.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>The collusion of the respectable media in the epic crime
in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> is rarely discussed. Recently,
there have been honourable exceptions. David Rose, who wrote major
investigative articles for the Observer that linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda
and to the anthrax attacks in America - claims long discredited - wrote in the
Evening Standard that he looked "back with shame and disbelief" at his support
for the invasion. In the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region></st1:place>, a number of
journalists have written regretfully about the supine way the freest press in
the world allowed the Bush regime to get away with its lies.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Charles Lewis, a former CBS star reporter and now director
of the Centre for Public Integrity, told me that had the media "fulfilled
their unique constitutional role and challenged the administration's lies,
such as those tying Iraq to al-Qaeda, there is a very, very good chance we
would not have gone to war".<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>With the exception of the Mirror, the Independent and
intermittently the Guardian, the same can be said of the British media.
British television rarely showed the full horror of "shock and awe" that the
Arab world saw via its satellite
broadcasters.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Videotape and photographs were sanitised. Phillip
Knightley points out that there was an "unwritten agreement that nothing too
horrific made it on to the screen or the front pages. Take the photograph of a
weeping Iraqi grandfather cradling in his arms his little granddaughter,
severely injured in a Coalition bomb attack on <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city
w:st="on">Basra</st1:city></st1:place>... You cannot recall it? I am not
surprised..." This picture, like so many pictures of suffering civilians, ran
in its entirety in the Arab press, but was cropped in <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region> and <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place> so that what was left of
the little girl's horribly mangled feet was not visible. The excuse was that
it was not "tasteful".<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>The campaign against the BBC by Blair's spin-master, by
the Murdoch press and Conrad Black's Telegraph and finally by Hutton, was
Goebbels-quality: a deliberate distraction, and perverse in the extreme. No
follower of the government's war agenda was more faithful than the BBC. A
comprehensive Media Tenor survey of coverage of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> by the
world's leading broadcasters' found that the BBC had given just 2 per cent to
demonstrations of anti-war dissent - less than even American broadcasters. A
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Cardiff</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> study found no
evidence that the BBC was anything but pro-war. Historically, the BBC has
always supported the establishment's wars by declaring the status quo (war)
neutral and dissent "biased". Propaganda made respectable dominates the very
language and tone of news and current
affairs.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Thus, BBC1's Panorama on 23 September 2002 claimed to have
"hard evidence" about <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>'s weapons of mass destruction, having
accepted as true a fake story about a secret biological weapons laboratory
under a major hospital in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city
w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:city></st1:place>. In common with most of the media,
the BBC went along with the greatest hoax of all: Colin Powell's presentation
to the United Nations Security Council in February last year as a final
justification for the invasion. This was made up of cartoon-like drawings,
such as "Slide 21", of which Powell said: "Here you see both truck- and
railcar-mounted mobile factories." Powell called this "diagramising". Of the
satellite images he presented, he said, "The photos that I am about to show
you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me. The
painstaking work of photo analysis takes experts with years and years of
experience, poring for hours and hours over light tables." This was the
"irrefutable evidence" for "65 facilities [that have] housed chemical
weapons".<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>It was all fake, as the profoundly cynical Powell has
since hinted. Bush himself has since joked about the lack of evidence of
weapons; Paul Wolfowitz has revealed that the WDM "story" was "agreed" as one
that the public would swallow; Donald Rumsfeld has admitted there was no link
between <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> and al-Qaeda. Thanks to their
propaganda, played unchallenged through most of the media, millions of
Americans still believe it. In <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>, soldiers talk about killing
and mistreating Iraqis "as payback for
9/11".<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, protecting the reputation
of the British army from the current contagion of revelations is a priority
task. Ironically, Piers Morgan, who has a brother in the army, was always
reluctant to publish anything that suggested "our boys" were like their
rampaging allies. When the Mirror published its "torture" photographs on 1
May, the paper stressed that the transgressors were "rogue"
soldiers.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>It was wrong.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Hoax or otherwise, what the Mirror's photographs revealed
was a trail of abuse and worse that runs right through the British army in
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>. Much of the evidence for this
has been collected by a tireless <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city
w:st="on">Birmingham</st1:city></st1:place> solicitor, Phil Shiner, acting for
13 Iraqi families, and by the Independent on Sunday, whose outstanding
investigations almost salvage the honour of British journalism. The IoS
reveals there are now nearly 40 cases of allegedly unlawful killings of Iraqi
civilians and prisoners by British forces since the invasion. When compared
with the 37 suspicious deaths of prisoners held by the Americans in
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region></st1:place>, the potential scale of
the British crime becomes evident, although it is clear these figures
represent only the surface. Evidence that soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire
Regiment carried out systematic torture under the direction of an officer is
to go to the high court.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>"In some cases officers actually took part," says Amnesty
International.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Yet on 14 May, a colonel from this regiment had the nerve
to suggest that Morgan's "ego" was the price of "the life of the soldier" - a
line almost certainly spun for him. Journalists are well aware of what Amnesty
calls systematic abuse. A year ago, the Sun published "artist's impressions"
of photographs taken by soldiers of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers showing
them stringing up Iraqi prisoners of war from a fork-lift truck and forcing
them to simulate sex acts. Several of the soldiers have been
prosecuted.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>A BBC newsreader referred to such photographs as "mere
mementoes". Imagine the response, had they been of Iraqis torturing British
PoWs. On the day Morgan was sacked, a BBC reporter, Nicholas Witchell, said:
"After the appalling reality of what the Americans have been doing, the
Mirror's pictures threatened to compromise the work of every British soldier."
By contrasting the "reality" of American abuse with the unreality of "the
Mirror's pictures", Witchell managed to whitewash the British army while
fretting that its good "work" in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> might be "compromised". Are
BBC trainees taught sophistry like
this?<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>The British army is doing no worse in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>
than it has done in its long history of colonial occupations. Torture was
deployed as a strategy in <st1:city w:st="on">Palestine</st1:city> (where the
British pioneered the terror tactic of home demolitions), in
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Cyprus</st1:country-region>, the British
Cameroons, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brunei</st1:country-region>, British
Guiana, <st1:city w:st="on">Aden</st1:city>, Borneo and <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern
Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place>. In Malaya, the conversion of entire
villages to concentration camps and the use of carcinogenic defoliants were
copied by the Americans in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region></st1:place>. In <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Northern
Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place>, British interrogators refined their
methods, reported Amnesty, "for the purpose or effect of causing a malfunction
or breakdown of a man's mental processes". Little of this was reported at the
time. Today, thanks to a couple of "rogue" newspapers, the digital camera and
the internet, the public is getting the truth, day by day, image by image,
fact by fact.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Michael Berg, whose son Nick was beheaded in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>
and who blames Bush and Rumsfeld, asks: "How can you take responsibility when
there are no consequences?" As they manipulate the United Nations to set up a
stooge regime in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city
w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:city></st1:place>, the Americans and British are
granting their own troops immunity from prosecution. After all, said a BBC
commentator, the soldiers' misdeeds "do not compare with Saddam Hussein's
systematic tortures and executions". So the tyranny of Saddam Hussein is now
the west's moral compass, is it?<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>Will journalists allow Blair to get away with yet another
charade? Or will they ask why Article 7 of the statute of the International
Criminal Court, to which <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> is a signatory, is not
being invoked? This makes clear that British and American behaviour in
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place> is categorised under "crimes
against humanity", for which the ultimate responsibility lies, as ever, at the
top.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><o:p><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2> </FONT></FONT></o:p></SPAN></P><FONT
face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif size=2></FONT>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana"><FONT face=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
size=2><FONT size=2>First published in the New Statesman - </FONT><A
href="https://www.zmag.org/admin/dynamic/www.newstatesman.co.uk"><FONT
size=2>www.newstatesman.co.uk</FONT></A></FONT></SPAN></P></BLOCKQUOTE></TD></TR></DIV>
<P><FONT face="Arial Black" color=#800080 size=2>----</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=2><FONT face="Arial Black" color=#800080>Mark and
Andrea<BR></FONT></FONT></P>
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