- The US press may finally be realising it was hoodwinked
over the war... but the coverage of Madrid proves it hasn't learned.
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- Who was it who alerted British tabloids to the "fact"
that our troops on Cyprus were under imminent threat of attack from Saddam's
weapons of mass destruction? Who was it who supplied the New York Times,
in September of 2002, with the "intelligence" that allowed the
paper to state that Iraq had attempted to procure thousands of aluminium
tubes in order to enrich uranium and produce a nuclear bomb?
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- These, of course, were only two of many fantasies whose
roots will never properly be known. You could add the tale of yellowcake,
the fairy story of mobile chemical weapons laboratories, the oft-repeated
fiction that United Nations resolution 1441 made war inevitable. A year
on, with carnage in Madrid marking the anniversary of the invasion, the
pieces of the mosaic no longer matter much. The pattern is what counts.
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- Part of the pattern, a large part, can be discerned in
the American press. After the election of the Spanish socialist party and
the decision by its leader, JosÈ Luis RodrÌguez Zapatero,
to remove Spain's troops from Iraq, newspapers in the United States were
almost of one voice last week. This was, they told their readers, "appeasement"
of al-Qaeda.
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- They may have mentioned, but certainly did not stress,
that 91% of the Spanish people had opposed the war to begin with and that,
unarguably, Zapatero was obeying the democratic will. Nor did American
papers waste much time explaining the fury of voters in Spain towards the
outgoing prime minister, JosÈ MarÌa Aznar, who had attempted
to spin the tragedy for electoral gain by claiming certain knowledge that
the massacre had been carried out by ETA, the Basque separatist group.
It was one lie too many.
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- Lies, it seems, are the currency of modern war. You might
have thought some collective memory would store the experiences of Suez,
of Vietnam, of the Falklands and Gulf I. Not so: the media's attention
span is short and journalists forget. The thing they forget, above all,
is that politicians don't tell the truth about wars.
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- There is a difference, for all that, between naivety
and docility, between trust and a wilful refusal to test what you are being
told. A lot of things about the Iraq conflict were failing to make sense
long before the fighting began. Even then large sections of the press,
particularly the American press, simply chose to believe what the politicians
said. That was, as even some Americans have begun to admit, a big mistake.
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- Headlines have told their story. "Iraq's arsenal
was only on paper" admitted the Washington Post recently. "So,
what went wrong?" Time magazine wanted to know. Even the right-wing
Wall Street Journal was obliged to report that: "Pressure rises for
probe of pre-war intelligence". The cat was out of the bag: they'd
been had. Yet why had publications with vast editorial resources been such
easy marks? And why had sceptics and dissidents been silenced?
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- The answer to the second question is simple: the great
American newspapers censored themselves. They became, if you like, patriotically
deaf. In the post-9/11 atmosphere they had no editorial strategy for coping
with George Bush's moral authority, and no editorial will to devise one.
If the President was going after the guys who knocked over the Twin Towers,
decent Americans were with him.
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- The trouble with that argument is that it confused cases.
Iraq, despite another subset of official fictions, had nothing to do with
September 11, and every spy agency said so. That takes us back to our first
question, whose answer is also simple: complicity. The American media,
in large part, chose to cooperate.
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- First, they chose to take the White House at its word
and failed to check assertions a junior reporter would have checked. Then
they adopted Iraqi defectors and exiles, many capable of saying anything
if it would lead to war on Saddam, as reliable sources. Then they preferred
to ignore sceptical rumblings in the intelligence community, widely reported
in Europe, over WMD. Finally, they heaped contempt on the International
Atomic Energy Authority and its inspectors.
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- When the fighting began, a novel process helped to cement
relationships. The embedding of journalists was attractive to the media
for one obvious reason: it cut their costs. These days the insurance premiums
required to cover a civilian in a war zone are astronomical, running into
tens of thousands of pounds. With embedded correspondents, the media could
be guaranteed words and pictures and be relieved of insurance costs. The
attraction can be measured, in a small way, by the fact that the Sunday
Herald was the only Scottish newspaper to refuse the chance to embed.
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- The deal was attractive to the military, too. A journalist
can only report what he or she sees. With embedding, the armies knew exactly
where most correspondents were, and knew exactly what they were hearing
and seeing. The US army had learned from Vietnam and watched while Britain
managed news from the Falklands: embedding was the result.
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- This meant, inevitably, that Iraqi divisions could appear
and disappear on a whim. It meant that the fighting could be as difficult
or as easy as the Pentagon wanted it to be. It meant that no one would
ever know how many Iraqi lives were being lost. The media, in large part,
put up with it. In the case of many newspapers and broadcasters, they put
up with it eagerly.
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- Back home in Britain, reactions were almost predictable.
Liberal newspapers, with the unprecedented exception of the Observer, were
sceptical about the war or actively opposed; conservative titles were marching
on Baghdad long before Bush and Blair were ready. It was the British way.
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- Yet in Britain there was, to say the least, a huge debate.
In America, a consensus of credulity reigned. As Michael Massing wrote
last month in the New York Review of Books: "Despite abundant evidence
of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence [over the alleged
existence of WMD], the press repeatedly let officials get away with it".
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- This is not to say that British sceptics were always
right. Robert Fisk of The Independent, a highly respected correspondent,
filed reports before and during the fighting predicting armageddon and/or
the mass slaughter of civilians. Many Iraqis died, but the carnage was
never as great as Fisk predicted.
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- It remains the case, equally, that anti-war columnists,
this one included, sometimes struggled to deal with the humanitarian argument.
Saddam was a murderous tyrant whose downfall was long overdue. Why quibble
over the fibs deployed to secure his fall? The dangers posed by pre-emption
and the importance of international law were part of the answer, but too
many writers resorted to anti-American clichÈs.
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- Our friends in the American media, it turns out, were
not listening. If reactions to Madrid are anything to go by, many still
prefer patriotic deafness. First the ETA theory was seized upon; now "appeasement"
is the only word that will do. The fight for democracy appears not to extend
to democratic Spain and the battle for truth is being left unfought. On
this newspaper we know from responses to our website that there was, and
remains, a huge appetite in the United States for untainted reporting.
Many Americans knew they were being conned. The American press has begun
to ask itself how it, too, could have been used so easily over WMD. But
as reactions to Madrid's tragedy reveal, the habit of unthinking allegiance
is becoming ingrained.
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- WHAT THE PAPERS THOUGHT THEN Editorial positions of the
principal Scottish and UK newspapers in the run-up to war in Iraq:
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- The Scotsman Pro-war
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- We have waited 12 years to disarm Saddam and, as 11 September
shows, such patience is now being misread to our detriment. In the words
of Mr Blair in his Common's speech on 18 March: " Iraq is not the
only regime with WMD. But back away now from this confrontation and future
conflicts will be infinitely worse and more devastating." (20 March
2003)
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- Scotland on Sunday Pro-war
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- Sadly there is no ultimately no alternative to using
force against Iraq. Saddam has spent more than a decade since the Gulf
war defying the UN's demands that he disarm. Our troops will need our strongest
support, and their families should expect our fullest solidarity. For what
they are about to do is right and just and will be celebrated by ordinary
Iraqis. (16 March 2003)
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- The Times Pro-war
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- Unless clear rules are established, by force if needs
be, then such poisons will become the currency of future conflict. (14
February 2003)
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- The Sun Pro-war
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- It is a twin threat of rogue states trading in the most
deadly weapons and unscrupulous terrorist groups around the world who twist
the religion of Islam to their own murderous ends. That is why we have
to strike and strike hard against Saddam. (19 March 2003)
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- The Sunday Times Pro-war
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- Avoiding war means allowing Saddam to keep his weapons
of mass destruction. It would encourage other rogue dictators to reach
for the nuclear trigger. So war it has to be. And soon. (16 March 2003)
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- The Observer Pro-war
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- We understand Mr Blair's preparedness to act at some
point because we share his analysis of the terrible risks posed by Saddam,
not least to his own people. Britain must not say never to military action.
(16 February 2003)
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- Sunday Herald Anti-war
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- This troika of the willing [Bush, Blair and Aznar], a
coalition of the decided, have reached the end of the line they drew themselves.
And it will not be the UN who decides when the point is reached: the US,
like a self-appointed judge, jury and executioner, has decided, and its
decision is final.
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- They have wasted enough time on diplomacy, and now they
want their appointment with destiny: a war against Saddam with, as ever,
God on their side.
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- It will be called a war ñ but in truth it will
be, to use Bush's parlance, a turkey-shoot, because Iraq has no answer
to this scale of force. (16 March 2003)
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- The Herald Anti-war
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- The Herald has argued consistently against any war that
does not have the backing of the international community as set out in
a fresh UN resolution. (18 March 2003)
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- Daily Record Anti-war
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- Three-quarters of the British people were against going
to war without the full authority of the United Nations. It is the wrong
war at the wrong time. (20 March 2003)
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- Sunday Mail Anti-war
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- Our leaders can try to shift the blame on to the French
for failing to secure a new UN resolution. That is too convenient. In reality,
the Prime Minister and the US President have manufactured this war. (16
March 2003)
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- Independent on Sunday Anti-war
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- Not in our name, Mr Blair. You do not have the evidence.
You do not have UN approval. You do not have your country's support. You
do not have your party's support. (9 March 2003)
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- The Guardian Anti-war
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- This weekend will be a crucial opportunity ñ perhaps
the last one ñ to try to save Mr Blair, and more importantly the
country, from the error of supporting a misjudged US approach towards the
Iraqi regime. (14 February 2003)
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- The Independent Anti-war
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- Britain may be only hours from war, and it is a war that
has not been sanctioned by the international community. This was not the
outcome that this newspaper sought. Far from it. We hoped for the peaceful
disarmament of Iraq, accomplished through diplomacy. (18 March 2003).
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