Navigation, MeK and the Good Old Shoe
April 1, 2007
The BBC has replaced a story about the capture of the British servicemen which quotes a member of the Iraqi Vichy regime, Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim commander of Iraq’s territorial waters, as expressing “surprise that British forces were operating in the area”, with another, where claims of the British establishment are presented unchallenged. Elsewhere the BBC quotes the General saying “Usually there is no presence of British forces in that area, so we were surprised and we wondered whether the British forces were inside Iraqi waters or inside Iranian regional waters.” Now the Observer is reporting that “the Ministry of Defence hinted for the first time it may have made mistakes surrounding the incident. An inquiry has been commissioned to explore ‘navigational’ issues around the kidnapping and aspects of maritime law.” In other words, the sailors were in Iranian waters.
To me the whole debate sounds superfluous. Below is the map BBC published with its sanitized report that presumably proved the innocence of the soldiers. Maybe its just me, but that seems like an awful long way from where a British soldier ought to be.
Mujahedin-e-Khalq Offers Lifebuoy
In the same article, the Observer also reports, “Downing Street was passed evidence purporting to show that the arrest of the British sailors was planned days in advance. Hossein Abedini, spokesman for the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran [NCRI], said the arrests were a ‘meticulously concocted operation’ to divert attention from Iran’s nuclear programme.” What these astute journalists (including the terrorism ‘expert’, Jason Burke) don’t report, of course, is that NCRI is the political front for the neocon-connected Mujahideen-e-Khalq (People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or PMOI, in English), an organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and Iran. The group has close ties to the neocons and the Israel Lobby in the United States, with the AIPAC front organization, Iran Policy Committee (headed by WINEP fellow Raymond Tanter) campaigning for the past few years to get it off the State Department’s list of known terrorist organizations. According to Scott Ritter, MeK has been used since 2002 by the Israeli intelligence to publicize information on Iran’s nuclear program.
Sobhani [an Iranian con-artist] and CDI [Committee for a Democratic Iran, an AIPAC spinoff] provided an ideal solution, namely that the Israeli government use Reza Pahlavi as the mouthpiece for telling the world about what the Iranians were up to in the field of nuclear weapons, and in exchange Pahlavi would be given immedite credibility and with it front runner status in the race of those trying to rule Iran post-Mullah. Unfortunately for the Israelis and CDI, Reza Pahlavi balked…Undeterred, [Michael] Ledeen and the CI turned to the MEK, or more specifically, its political front in the Washingt, D.C., the NCRI, as the next best option to bring the Israeli intelligence to center stage. CDI reportedly lobbied the NCRI representative, Alireza Jaferzadeh, to serve as the mouthpiece for presenting the Israeli intelligence to the general public…Isareli intelligence had maintained a relationship with the MEK that dated back to the mid-1990s. (Ritter, Target Iran, p. xxv)
One of its vocal supporters in the US is the same Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of the Cuban and Israel Lobby fame. For a representative of a terrorist organization, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI’s representative in the US, receives remarkably generous access to US mainstream media. According to his own website:
Jafarzadeh has frequently appeared on major television and radio broadcasts including Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Evening News, NBC, ABC, BBC, Sky News, ITN, VOA, and NPR, to discuss Iran’s WMD program and terrorist activities around the world.
Jafarzadeh has published essays in, and been interviewed by, news outlets including New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Newsday, Austin-American Statesman, Time, Newsweek, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, United Press International, Space & Missile, Defense Week, and Arms Control Today.
Jafarzadeh has lectured in Georgetown University, University of Michigan, and National War College, and has been a frequent speaker at briefings, hearings and luncheons at the US Congress, the United Nations, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, American University, National Young Leaders Conference, and the Morning Newsmaker Program at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
In short, as long as your interests are aligned with the dominant elite of the reigning superpower, representing a terrorist organization is no impediment to success.
Good Old Shoe
In the film Wag the Dog, at one point the spindoctor, Robert De Niro, and a hollywood producer, Dustin Hoffman, come up with the idea of whipping up patriotic zeal among the citizens through the symbolism of old shoes thrown at trees, telegraph poles and so on, to represent the abandonment of Sgt. Shumacher — a deranged convict serving prisontime for raping a nun who is being elevated to the position of a hero to sell a phoney war orchestrated to help the president’s reelection amidst rumors of sexual impropriety – and soon they have all of America united in support of the president in his attempts to secure the release of ‘the good old shoe’.
Beyond hollywood, it is the “support our troops” yellow ribbons that play a similar role; they help the nation symbolically erase their own culpability in sending their fellow citizens off to probable death while professing support that entails nothing in the way of sacrifice. While the practice has its roots in the English Civil War, it has generally been in evidence more in the United States than in Britain. However, one consequence of the growing Americanisation of British culture is that many of the practices that Britain had bequeathed to the colonies, are now being recycled back, including yellow ribbons. So according to the Observer, “friends of one of the captives showed their concern by draping yellow ribbons over the Cornwall pub where he used to work”.
If you can’t be bothered watching the whole program (which for the most part is unbearably vacuous) just watch Tony Benn beating Bolton to a Pulp. [Thanks Ann]
So the BBC’s Question Time chooses to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by a hosting a debate — and there is a single individual on the six person panel to voice the antiwar opinion!
As the British state’s primary propaganda organization, one is hardly surprised, but considering the fact that at the moment the climate of opinion stands overwhelmingly against the war, one can’t help being baffled that a news organization woud put its reputation on the line like this. Only last week, in classic Orwellian fashion, BBC reported the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population is against the war in the following novel manner: despite the events of the past four years, and the numerous scandals, the government still has support for more than 30% of the people.
And then they talk about censorship in North Korea!
So the BBC had the majority, who are antiwar, represented by the octagenarian Tony Benn alone, while arrayed against him were John Bolton, considered an extremists even in the neocon ranks; Des Brown, a Blairite yes man; and Liam Fox, a Tory fossil whose thoughts, like the rest of his partymen, remain blissfuly immune from an intrusions of reality (They also had the execrable Benazir Bhutto and Charles Kennedy but their presence didn’t contribute anything either way).
The audience comprised of a former official from the Vichy Iraqi regime, and — surprise, surprise — he thought the invasion that killed 655,000 Iraqis was a wonderful idea. So did a tory-boy, who appeared as if he had missed his daily medication. In fact, he went further and said US, UK, Australia and New Zealand should not be impeded by the UN Security Council if they choose to invade any country. It also had a yuppie who appeared to have pulled his head from his posterior too recently to make any sense. According to him, “Francy, China and Russia” have a vested interest in Iraq therefore they didn’t want a war; presumably the Brits and Americans are there for benevolent reasons alone; I have discovered Darwin’s missing link.
To be fair, the audience did have some sensible individuals, who made some excellent contributions. One young lady challenged John Bolton, reminding him that it is his nation that is the rogue state rampaging through other sovereign countries. Interestingly, when she pointed out the well known fact that there are many in Iraq and Afghanistan who find the present conditions so intolerable, that they even considered Saddam and the Taliban a better alternative, many in the audience appeared indignant.
As confirmation of its role in furnishing propaganda to support the state’s policies, BBC garnered praise from Des Brown for showing a “a much more balanced” picture of Iraq, for which it “needs to be congratulated” – for showing the “prosperity” that the occupation has brought to the North, and showing the “improvements” in the South. In Afghanistan he didn’t mention any achievements, except the fact that “40 other countries are with us”.
I had underestimated Tony Benn in the past, but he came across as a giant surrounded by moral dwarfs. Every time he spoke, he pierced through the wall of hypocrisy. Orwell had once said, “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”. Benn took on the Lilliputians BBC had surrounded him with, and trampled over the edifice of lies and deceity that they had erected.
The most amusing — and misplaced — presence was that of Benazir Bhutto. She has no relevance to the debate; she was only invited as the token ‘brown’ presence. A woman of modest intellectual abilities, she can pack more platitudes into a sentence than Ban Ki Moon could into a life time of speeches. Everyone of her contributions was banal, silly — or both. She wanted to endorse the status quo, without wanting to appear as doing so.
The Tory fellow, who seemed indignant at being outhawked by the neocon and the Blairite, offered the following gem: Britain is entitled to kill all the Iraqis it pleases, since its citizens have the the right to free speech. By that logic, China has every right to drop a nuke on Britain since its citizens are much more adept at the use of chopsticks — of course the Brits would understand!
Dimbleby, the host, unfortunatley appears too sympathetic to the status-quo to allow a real debate to take place. And when you have a representative from the Vichy government of Iraq, who has clearly profited personally from the invasion, what do you expect him to say? Does he not see the conflict of interest there?
Charles Kennedy, for all practical purposes, doesn’t exist.
In the end, despite Tony Benn’s smashing performance, the program could be hardly considered a debate. It would have been a debate, had the antiwar voice received proportional — or for that matter even equal — representation. Instead, the panel had three supporters of war arrayed against one. Now it would have been a debate had the panel been more balanced. Imagine the antiwar faction represented by Benn along with George Galloway and Harold Pinter. That is what I would call a debate. But then again, why bother George and Pinter, when Benn alone managed to cream the lot?
Pining for a Dictator
March 22, 2007
A few months back, John Pilger reported the following:
On Nov. 14, Bridget Ash wrote to the BBC’s Today program asking why the invasion of Iraq was described merely as “a conflict.” She could not recall other bloody invasions reduced to “a conflict.” She received this reply:
“Dear Bridget,
You may well disagree, but I think there’s a big difference between the aggressive ‘invasions’ of dictators like Hitler and Saddam and the ‘occupation,’ however badly planned and executed, of a country for positive ends, as in the Coalition effort in Iraq.
Yours faithfully,
Roger Hermiston
Assistant Editor, Today“
One could perhaps overlook the inanity of Roger “Haw Haw” Hermiston, for after all, he is a mere apparatchik of the British State’s primary propaganda organization, but what is baffling is just how pervasive this type of thinking is, especially in the ranks of the educated. As Orwell noted in his unpublished preface to Animal Farm, through the process of education and socialization, the average careerist like Hermiston comes to recognize just what will “not do” if he is to have any hopes of advancement in society. The relative humanization is a mere corrollary of the reflexive deference to state authority — it is a way of rationalizing mass murder, and suppressing the associated guilt. It as an attempt to project noble intent onto an unquestionably criminal act. Saddam Hussein killed 200,000; Bush-Poodle kill 655,000 — and the former was a mass murderer! It takes impressive discipline not to see the latter thus.
To prick the windbag’s emperor-and-his-splendid-clothes fable, here is a new report:
The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: “I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”
The weightlifter had also been a mechanic and had felt the full weight of Saddam’s regime when he was sent to Abu Ghraib prison by the Iraqi leader’s son, Uday, after complaining that he had not been paid for fixing his motorcycle.
He explained: “There were lots of people from my tribe who were also put in prison or hanged. It became my dream ever since I saw them building that statue to one day topple it.”
Yet he now says he would prefer to be living under Saddam than under US occupation. He said: “The devil you know [is] better than the devil you don’t. We no longer know friend from foe. The situation is becoming more dangerous. It’s not getting better at all. People are poor and the prices are going higher and higher.”
Saddam, he says, “was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse”.
If Lord Haw Haw Hermiston has three brain-cells functioning — which I doubt he does — this is when he would be saying, “Ouch!”
Zionist Hydra: Terror-Free Oil Initiative
February 14, 2007
The brilliant and tireless Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada has uncovered another head of the Zionist hydra: Terror-Free Oil Initiative. Following is from a profile I did for Spinwatch:
TFOI is a Coral Springs, Florida-based racist pro-Israel lobbying group that claims to have established gasoline filling stations in several US cities that do not sell oil originating “from countries that do not export or finance terrorism.” Its website states: “We educate the public by promoting those companies that acquire their crude oil supply from nations outside the Middle East and by exposing those companies that do not.”
The organization shares its address with Americans Against Hate, an organization primarily dedicated to supporting the extreme right in Israel.
Modus Operandi
The organization’s modus operandi is crude, in-your-face propaganda:
- The logo includes the Pentagon and World Trade Center twin towers with the flight numbers of the 9/11 planes inscribed on them;
- An image with Usama bin Laden’s face crossed out;
- The banners alternate between “God Bless America”, “We Stand With Israel”, “[UK] You are in our prayers”, “Support Denmark”;
- Its spokesman appears on TV with an American flag for a tie.
The organization is pushing a variety of the Clash of Civilizations theory which identifies Israel with a West at war with the Arab-Islamic world.
Anti-Arab Racism
The organization’s website includes slogans that gas station owners are encouraged to display, such as “Our oil does not come from the Middle East, Your dollars do NOT finance terrorism.” Another, demonstrating the indiscriminate and racially-based nature of the campaign, states “This Gas Station is part of Terror Free Oil Initiative – We do not purchase our oil from countries whose regimes or populations are hostile to the United States.” The racism of the organization is confirmed by the fact that countries outside the Middle East whose “regimes or populations” are putatively just as hostile, such as Venezuela, are not targeted by it.
Controversy
In the January 6, 2007, Los Angeles Times article “Sen. Boxer rescinds award to Islamic activist,” Ali Abunimah wrote:
In a January 4 [2007] article on the extreme right-wing website Frontpagemag.com, Kaufman claimed that newly elected Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison “carried much radical Islamist baggage,” and he refers to American Muslim groups as “America’s live-in enemies.” In December 2006, Kaufman called California Senator Barbara Boxer a “senator for terror” because she bestowed a public service award on a Muslim American community activist who had previously criticized Israeli human rights abuses. Under pressure from Kaufman’s organization, Boxer, a staunch supporter of Israel, withdrew the award.
Personnel
From all appearances, the project seem to have a single operate: Joe Kaufman. Kaufman is a hardline Zionist propagandist who writes for the extreme-right Frontpage Magazine. He is also the chairman of Americans Against Hate and the founder of CAIR Watch.
Media Exposure
Not surprisingly, Kaufman has made frequent appearances on Fox News and other American right wing media, however, despite its dubious provenance, National Public Radio and the BBC — which claims to rely only on credible sources — also chose to run stories on the initiative.
Newsnight in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of BBC
February 12, 2007
BBC’s Newsnight reports on clashes between worshippers and Israeli Occupation Forces at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on Friday, and in characteristic fashion, the narrative is framed in the Palestinian-attack,Israeli-retaliation format. According to the BBC hack in Jerusalem, the Palestinians started it by attacking the police with rocks and he affirms that Palestinian claims about their holy sites being endangered by the construction are unfounded.
First of all, one may ask, why is the Police surrounding a place of worship in such numbers? Secondly, whether it is endangering the holy site or not, what right does Israel have to proceed with digging and construction in territory it has illegally occupied?
Now for a reality check. Here is what the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz reported:
The violence came a day after police stormed the disputed compound in the Old City, using tear gas and stun grenades to disperse Muslim worshippers, who rioted after Friday prayers. Protests against the construction have spread throughout the Muslim world, where demonstrators have accused Israel of plotting to harm Islamic shrines.
BBC also seems to have overlooked an important detail. Washington Post reports:
The Israeli government is funding the first construction of a Jewish settlement in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter since taking control of it nearly four decades ago. The Flowers Gate development plan calls for more than 20 apartments and a domed synagogue that would alter the skyline of the Old City.
Karain’s property is at the center of an accelerating campaign by Jewish settler organizations to change the ethnic and physical character of this city’s oldest Arab neighborhoods. The Israeli government is financing projects that dovetail with the settlers’ goals, which they say are to secure the Old City and an adjacent valley for Israel in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians…
The settlers’ parcel-by-parcel campaign is unfolding within a single square mile bordered by ancient ramparts and sheer valley walls. Israel seized the Old City, the adjacent valley known as the Holy Basin and the rest of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war, later annexing them…
“Our goal is to reestablish the Jewish presence in all of the Old City,” said Ezra Waner, 26, a student at the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, which has existed periodically in the Muslim Quarter for 120 years. “Slowly, slowly, we want to bring the Jews back.”…
British Broadcasting Calamity: BBC Does Tehran
February 12, 2007
So the BBC does a report on the buildup against Iran and who does it find to represent America? John Bolton — who is considered a fanatic, even within the ideologically extreme ranks of the neocons.
America, BBC tells us, “is ratcheting up pressure, to prevent Iran going nuclear”. Nevermind the fact that according to the IAEA there is no evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear program.
Bush, BBC reports, “will not tolerate a nuclear Iran”. BBC reports this without demurral. There is no reason why it should let facts get in the way of the Führer’s proclamations.
BBC repeats American charges of Iranians arming the Iraqi resistance, but fails to question why the US is so concerned about the Shia resistance when the bulk of its losses come at the hands of the Sunnis. It is even considerate enough to tell us how “senior administration officials” are keen to avoid the war– if only those wily Iranians would not prod them by refusing to develop the bomb that the Americans would have to invade them in order to prevent them from making.
Notice the headline on this BBC article reporting the agreement signed by Hamas and Fatah in Mecca (Makkah). Unless the BBC editor literally had his head up his arse, I don’t see how he could relate the headline to the image on the right; the caption underneath it; or the following statements.
It is hoped that the deal brokered in Mecca will end weeks of factional unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
There were jubilant scenes in the Gaza Strip, which suffered the worst of the recent violence, as people took to the streets to cheer the signing of the deal.
People in cars waved the flags of both Hamas and Fatah, while some set off fireworks and celebratory gunfire.
That doesn’t sound particularly muted, now does it? Perhaps the real explanation lies in the following statement:
Hamas has rejected pressure from donor countries to recognise Israel and under this new deal that position has not been forced to change.
The fact that it is not included in the new agreement, named the “Mecca Declaration”, explains the muted response from the US and Israel, our correspondent says.
So it appears Hamas did not compromise on fundamental principles — Israel has not recognized Palestinians as a people and accepted their right to self determination, it is only fair for Hamas to reciprocate – and US and Israel have little reason to rejoice in the termination of a fratricidal war; especially, when it was a war that had been actively fomented by the US and Israel.
For the BBC, in the end, the jubilation of a few million Palestinians is of small significance, when the White Man (US), and wanna-be White Man (Israel) have had their designs, atleast temporarily, thwarted.
As an aside, don’t you find it ironic when Israel (especially Benjamin Netanyahu) frequently identifies itself with the White Man – “we in the West”; “our Judeo-Christian values” – given the way it bestows the label of “anti-Semite” liberally on anyone who dares criticize its crimes. Isn’t that undermining the fundamental precepts of Zionism? If Semitic Jews were so integrated into the West, then where is the raison d’etre for a Jewish state?
British Broadcasting Calamity: Ralph’s Dead!
January 12, 2007
Just yesterday I was complaining that BBC’s frontpage has no room for wogs. Today they put two: Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri!
I avoid BBC like a plague unless, of course, if I have to find out what the day’s Foreign Office talking points read. But I have often wondered what BBC’s regular readership is like?
A look at BBC’s “Most Popular Stories Now” section may hold a clue:
Hmmm… with options ranging from a war in Iraq, another in Somalia, an occupation in Palestine, espionage in a Polish church, etc., etc., etc., BBC Online’s visitor are busy reading news of the death of Raph: the US celebrity whale shark.
Perhaps I’m being too judgemental; given how BBC covers events in Africa and the Middle-East, perhaps readers are merely looking for the least ridiculous item.
British Broadcasting Calamity: Continued…
January 11, 2007
BBC‘s headline announcing Bush’s escalation of the Iraq war reads “US to target anti-Iraq activity“. You may wonder what “anti-Iraq activity” means, but if you are worried about an imminent attack on the obvious sources of such activity — US-UK occupying forces and the civilian administrators — you are wide off the mark. Here BBC is merely copying from the talking points it receives from the Foreign Office (which in turn receives it from the Pentagon). In the Orwellian world of the American Foreign Policy, helpfully relayed to the masses by the BBC (using taxpayer money), US “defends” itself against “foreign fighters”… in Iraq. The article also quotes Condoleeza Rice warning “action against countries destabilizing Iraq”. All the familiar rogues are present. What is absent, however, is BBC‘s sense of irony.
Turning to Afghanistan, we find BBC is more circumspect this time. The title of the report reads “Nato ‘kills 150 Taliban fighters’”. I was frankly surprised to see BBC wrap the death toll in quotation marks, as such a treatment is generally reserved only for Palestinian or non-White casualties. But reading the rest of the article, it becomes clear that the scepticism had less to do with the source than the manner of the reporting.
Nato says as many as 150 Taleban militants have been killed in a battle in eastern Afghanistan…
The Afghan defence ministry earlier estimated 80 fatalities. There was no independent confirmation of numbers…
The spokesman, Dr Muhammad Hanif, told Associated Press news agency that the figure of 150 Taleban fighters killed was “a complete lie”…
“Initial battle damage estimates indicate as many as 150 insurgents were killed,” it said.
While the defence ministry put the death toll at 80, an Afghan commander, General Murad Ali, said only about 10 bodies were recovered. He personally estimated the death toll at about 50.
It is not clear why the figures differed so much and Nato did not say how it had arrived at the figure…
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what passes for journalism on BBC.
But one might ask what has caused this novel circumspection hitherto unheard of at the positively credulous BBC?
Major Dominic White, a spokesman for the Nato force in Kabul, told the BBC as far as he was aware there were no civilian casualties in the Paktika battle.
The death of civilians has been a major issue in Afghanistan, with Nato saying last week that its biggest mistake of the past year has been killing innocent people.
The alliance has been accused – including by President Hamid Karzai – of carelessness over civilian lives when attacking Taleban fighters.
Last month Nato said 80 militants had been killed in an operation in southern Helmand province, but the death toll was later reduced to eight.
British Broadcasting Calamity: BBC and the Embedded Native
January 6, 2007
Last night’s Newsnight is in keeping with BBC’s tradition of relaying state propaganda while maintaining a veneer of respectability. The BBC is “shooting the gun from someone else’s shoulder”, as the Pakhtun saying goes, when it employs the white man’s other favorite Iraqi (Ahmad Chalabi being the first), Salam Pax, to present a potted history of Saddam’s rule that considerately elides the US-UK role in sustaining his reign of terror.
Salam Pax (real name Salam al Janabi), son of Adnan al Janabi, a “moderate” Sunni member of Iyad Allawi’s party, is the ideal embedded native – fluent in English, well placed, resourceful and blithely reconciled to the idea of foreigners occupying his country. The dominant theme in his reporting is the normalcy of life in Iraq: a life of consumption — familiar Western brands of course — and reminiscences of past horrors. There is a clear disjuncture between the Baghdad Salam lives in and the one inhabited by millions of less privileged Iraqis frequently reported on by respected journalists, such as Patrick Cockburn: there is a virtual absence of the occupation, bombings, blackouts and water shortages.
Had BBC presented this seriously flawed history of Saddam itself – without using the “Baghdad-Blogger’s-opinion” device – it would have seriously undermined its credibility, besides openening itself up to ridicule. The opinions of articulate and knowledgeable Iraqis such as Haifa Zangana or Sami Ramadani would not have helped since, while they remain critical of Saddam, they are equally uncompromising in their excoriation of the US-UK role in their nation’s tragedy. A modern day house slave, therefore, comes in handy when BBC has to validate state policies without making itself appear as an establishment mouthpiece.
The oddly cartoonish Baghdad Blogger starts by absolving US-UK of their role in the present destruction of Iraq by shifting agency neatly into Saddam’s corner; it is one of the “wars he chose to wage”. A selective biography of Saddam’s life follows, the ommissions are noteworthy: While Saddam’s assassination attempt on Abdul Karim Qasim in ’59 is covered, CIA’s role in it goes unmentioned; the ’63 Ba’ath coup, which succeeded in deposing Qasim and killing thousands of Iraqi Communists (read Nationalists) named in lists furnished by the CIA is overlooked entirely, as is the ’68 coup, aided, once again, by the ubiquitous CIA; the brutal and extended war with Iran is mentioned, what is overlooked is the US, UK, German role in furnishing the Chemical-Biological weapons and satellite imagery that enabled the mass slaughter(declassified documentation of the cooperation available at the National Security Archives); the ’91 Gulf war is mentioned, what is overlooked is the destruction wrought on Iraq’s civilians and infrastructure in the US-UK led campaign that dropped more bombs on Iraq in 5 weeks than the total in 6 years of WWII in the Western theatre.
For maximum effect, however, we are told Saddam’s favorite book was Mein Kampf (in fact, it was Stalin’s Life and Works), and while there is mention of “UN imposed sanctions”, the fact that support for these sanctions did not extend beyond US and UK is conveniently overlooked.
The following observation from Juan Cole is equally valid for the British coverage of Saddam’s legacy:
The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans [and the British, of course] their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran.
Perhaps the situation is best summed up by Slavoj Zizek:
Saddam Hussein’s regime was an abominable authoritarian state, guilty of many crimes, mostly toward its own people. However, one should note the strange but key fact that, when the United States representatives and the Iraqi prosecutors were enumerating his evil deeds, they systematically omitted what was undoubtedly his greatest crime in terms of human suffering and of violating international justice: his invasion of Iran. Why? Because the United States and the majority of foreign states were actively helping Iraq in this aggression.
