Another Salvo in the War: Vendettas to Pursue

Here’s a piece on recent website coverage of the so-called revamping of US Iraq policy. The website provides the most detailed and broad range of BBC coverage available anywhere, and must surely be important in shaping international opinion through the internet. The newsgathering it employs must also be very important for co-ordinating all branches of the BBC- terrestrial TV, radio, digital and cable.

Another Salvo in the War: Vendettas to Pursue

The BBC is not paying attention to reports that it is having a bad war. In fact, it is particularly keen to emphasise that the war isn’t over until the fat lady is free to sing in a UN sponsored concert tour of Tikrit, Fallujah and the Baathist triangle compeered by Rageh Omar. Until then, or until Bush is re-elected to their chagrin, they will not budge an inch or give a budge in their implacable war on Dubya’s terrorism.

It might surprise some people that the Beeb has run a series of reports capitalising on Donald Rumsfeld’s perceived ‘snub’ by Condoleeza Rice. There are no fewer than four correspondent pieces dealing with this ‘hot issue’ in Washington, Colorado and Iraq, which Rumsfeld portrayed as a routine memo. You’d almost think the Beeb didn’t like Rummie.

This week’s Iraq centrefold (well, it’s fairly sexy anyway) appears to be Nick Child’s report, ‘Has Rumsfeld been demoted?’. Since this would imply a loss of rank, and Rummie hasn’t been removed from his post, the answer is obviously ‘no’- end of story as billed. This article is one of those ‘rent a gob’ pieces, where the big blows are dealt by an ‘expert’, in this case prime bruiser being William Hartung of the grandly titled ‘World Policy Institute’, author of ‘Power Trip: US Foreign policy After September 11th’and guest on the subject of ‘America Attacked: Alternatives to War’ for a Washington Post online debate on 20th September 2001. Sounds friendly to Rummie. Actually, on investigation, he sounds like Rummie’s biggest enemy: who better to share the moment of Rumsfeld’s ‘decline’ with? Did they even need to rent this gob?

Surprisingly, ‘Mr Hartung… said that, not before time, President Bush was putting Mr Rumsfeld in his place’. He was ‘a loose cannon’… who ‘believes he can get away with it because he’s an elder statesman’… and ‘says these things in a jovial fashion’ . Another, more moderate, ‘expert’, talked in terms of a gentle decline. The combined effect of one vaguely (though arguably) moderate voice and one enemy of Rumsfeld? I’d say the Beeb’s attitude towards Rumsfeld, exemplified by David Dimbleby’s comment in a televised interview six months ago, is pretty consistent, and Hartung is a useful chap to knock the nails in the coffin:

‘DD: Are you saying things the rest of the administration won’t speak out about? Are you part of the problem of the United States getting the kind of backing that it needs?

DR: Well, I doubt it.’ (March 04 2003)

I think we need to ask the BBC: ‘Are you part of the problem of the United States getting the kind of backing that it needs?’ They are the story, everybody, as they have said about Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor.

BTW, the other dispatches are almost as bad- each suggestive rather than factual, with the same half truths and insinuations found in this one. Look- here, here and here.