, the ever miserable Caroline Haw-Hawley managed to get out of the BBC’s private enclave in central Baghdad to report from Halabja, largely bemoaning:
“but it’s not for this that Saddam’s going on trial, at least not yet, relatives of the five thousand Kurds massacred in Halabja in March 1988 will have to wait for their day in court, the first legal proceedings against Saddam are for separate killings in the town of Dujail, hundreds of miles from here”
Unfortunately Caroline didn’t have the time to tell us that “court officials say the case was chosen because it was the easiest and quickest case to compile“, which sounds quite reasonable under the circumstances, but she did manage to wrap up her piece with:
“each headstone here represents a family wiped out with weapons that Saddam Hussein bought from the West”
Just in case Caroline’s definition of “The West” unintentionally misleads anyone, here, courtesy of Scott Burgess, are figures he derived from those of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (an independent foundation established in 1966 under the auspices of the Swedish parliament), showing “actual deliveries of major conventional weapons” to Iraq between 1980 and 2002, expressed in millions of dollars, in relative terms, at 1990 prices:
| Vendors | $Millions | Percent | ||
| USSR | 17,503 | 50.78% | ||
| France | 5,221 | 15.15% | ||
| China | 5,192 | 15.06% | ||
| Czechoslovakia | 1,540 | 4.47% | ||
| Poland | 1,626 | 4.72% | ||
| Brazil | 724 | 2.10% | ||
| Egypt | 568 | 1.65% | ||
| Romania | 524 | 1.52% | ||
| Denmark | 226 | 0.66% | ||
| Libya | 200 | 0.58% | ||
| USA | 200 | 0.58% |
Referring to the original source, we can see that the UK’s total for this period, according to SIPRI, was $79 million dollars. We can also see that there are no figures recorded for the period from 1991-2002 – the period when UN sanctions were officially in force, which is confusing, because I distinctly recall watching, ‘Live on Sky’, as US forces found recently manufactured Russian and French arms at Baghdad airport after they liberated it from Saddam’s forces in 2003. Almost as confusing even as Caroline’s apparent understanding of “The West”, given that, according to SIPRI, over 80% of the arms sales to Iraq were from the Soviets, French and Chinese, which isn’t “The West” as I understand it, then or now.
Just to be clear though, SIPRI’s figures are based on ‘major conventional weapons’ sales rather than chemical weapons, but they give a good indication of who really armed Saddam. Moreover, chemical weapons themselves are relatively cheap and easy to make, the hardest part being the delivery systems for those weapons, which is where all those arms sales would have been useful for Saddam.
To see the report for yourself take your pick of Windows Media Hi/Lo or Realplayer Hi/Lo, starting about 20’39” from the beginning.
Excellent points. It’s the kind of casual comment which has been fuelling thousands of protesters for several years now. Facts can not be too often reiterated, yet the BBC just regurgitates Galloway-style spin.
Second that, excellent post.
The link to Scott Burgess’ post from 2 years ago is excellent as well for it is still relevant today. In the second part, he adressed another issue that will more than likely be featured extensively on MSM in the coming days – The horrendous violations of Saddam’s rights.
Excellent points here, I would have thought the BBC would list the weapons sales similar to this and show the people?
It would change everyone’s view of the USA. And for one thing re-assert the fact that Russia and China we already knew about, but France was a major loser out of all of this.
I cannot help but feel that the BBC has perhaps forgotten to show this?
Also on the 10pm News last night (18Oct) There was a major article maybe 5mins in length about the RAF.
The RAF? I thought to myself. Doesnt the BBC hate anything like that>?
Talking about the latest addition to the RAF, The Eurofighter.
Well, i was pleased to see this, in fact i’d like to see similar such reports on the state of the Army, Navy and RAF on a regular basis if i may be so bold as to request it.
For those of you not so informed about the Eurofighter, it is a new piece of hardware for sure, but what we weren’t told by the BBC was that no sooner had it entered reserve service with the RAF for trials, the MoD under Geoff Hoon at the time, had them fly immediately to Singapore, (Singapore was looking for a replacement). Reason being, the MoD cannot afford to buy 232, and this government wants to sell them off, to either Austria or some other country.
What a waste of time. The USA, recently purchased 200 F18 super hornets at a cost of £2.5bn, far superior aircraft to the Eurofighter.
The Eurofighter costs £20bn for 232 aircraft. I think it was about time we bought American, it would save billions of pounds for the taxpayer and the kit would be far superior.
OT. Final Salary pensions for public sector staff, Channel 4 news was brilliant with Jon Snow. He really layed into the Union guy, this scandal is discriminating against all of us non public sector. About time it ended as it will end up costing at present £700bn, nearly 3 times national debt in 40 years time. An horrendous sum.
This must be stopped now.
But Labour didnt. because they want to be able to say when the next Conservative govt wins in 4 years time “look at the tories, they’re going to scrap your pension” when all along the Labour party know they have to stop it. Very sly.
Isn’t it rather racist of the BBC to think that an Arab can’t be a genocidal tyrant without help from ‘the West’?
Amazing; anyone who knows anything about military kit will have observed that most of the Iraqi military equipment that we have seen on our TV screens in news reports from the 80s to the fall of the Sadam regime in 2003 was former Warsaw pact or Chinese stuff. Of the top of my head this includes AKs, RPKs, PKs, RPGs, Druganovs, Migs (didnt get off the ground!), T55s, Katyushas, Gaz Jeeps, BTR-60s, BMPs etc. Also some French missiles and prior to Gulf war 1 some South African 155 mm artillery.
I have not seen any US or UK kit depicted in the Iraq ORBAT (order of battle). The BBC’s tendentious spin on this is vile and just Oh so typical.
Stop public funding from the BBC NOW!
An excellent post. The scale of the financial commitment of Russia, France and China in Iraq must go some way to explain thier reluctance as UN security council members to support the US and UK in taking action against Saddam.
According to Jeremy Paxman, Sadam gained his chemical weapons from a variety of sources.
There is an excerpt from Paxman’s book here:
http://highway99.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_highway99_archive.html#110438775416021585
Here are a few quotes:
An American company provided the blueprints for Iraq’s first poison gas plant in 1978.
It’s not clear if the company knew that they had designed a chemical weapons factory. Paxman doesn’t say.
The protective suits used by its employees came from Britain.
I can’t see anything wrong with supplying protective clothing. Hardly an offensive weapon.
German and French companies were in the forefront of supplying the sophisticated equipment needed for three other factories: Salman Pak, Al Fallujah, and Samarra.
So the anti-war French and Germans aren’t entirely blameless…
One relatively small Dutch company, Melchamie, exported literally thousands of tons of precursor chemicals to SEPP.
Who’d have thought? Little old Holland caught up in this “evil western plot” to gas the Kurds.
Sometimes the firms involved knew what was going on and turned a blind eye; often they were ignorant. As Richard Butler, subsequently the head of the U.N. Special Commission on Disarmanent [sic] (UNSCOM), explained, “the same fermenter used to make anthrax could be rinsed out and used to make beer, and the same equipment used to make the nerve agents sarin and tabun could be used to make aspirin tablets.”
I think that says it all:
The companies supplying the equipment and chemicals to Saddam didn’t know the whole story. So, the end use never really occurred to them. If you owned a company making fermenters, would you immediately think a customer wanted to make anthrax?
Whereas the French, Russians and Chinese knew exactly what they were doing when they exported $27,000,000,000 worth of weapons to the dictator.
I wonder if they stopped exporting them after the gassing of the Kurds? Maybe the BBC could do an investigation? Educate and inform….
One of the big problems we had in Gulf War 1 was that the Iraqis were using Puma helicopters (French ones) which were the same as ours. Ended up with the Pumas having to stay behind the lines to stop getting shot at….cheers garcon..you muppet! Indeed the French Foreign Legion who were with us in GW1 and had an even worse problem as much of their kits including vehicles were mistaken for Iraqi stuff by the Arab League forces fighting to the left flank of their area of operations!
OT
Slightly related to this whole Military theme.
Page 2 of the FT.
Article on the Royal Navy, regarding the proposed new Aircraft Carriers, which it appears have been delayed yet again…
Perhaps the BBC could investigate this, as it is very important for the future of the Navy and Britain’s defence’s as a whole.
Let alone the industry/ job/ political implications, i would have thought this a very interesting piece to investigate?
Credit to the poster of the today’s article, excellent post.
OT, but the best intro ever to the Jeremy Vine SHow:
‘Saddam’s trial starts badly, as he refuses to identify himself…. ?’ Yes, legal shenanigans from the accused. Bet that doesn’t happen often. How can the case possibly proceed ?
‘The American Embassy doesn’t pay the congestion charge, and it’s not the only one….’ So why single out the Yanks then ?
Meanwhile, they’re also looking at faith schools which are, apparently, ‘popular, but divisive’. No begging the question there, then.
Try complaining about Ms Hawley’s bias and you will get a very ‘wet fish’ response.
A friend recently complained about an item on the 10pm news about UK people emigrating to NZ that contained gratuitous bias about the US alliance (ie implying without substance, that emigrants prefer NZ to Australia due to Australia’s alignment with the US).
My friend got the most wishy-washy reply – saying that it is not BBC’s policy to be biased, and that the producer of the news will get a reminder to not be biasd in the future. I somehow don’t think that producer ever got that instruction, nor took much notice of it.
andrew. the picture brings your iten to life. then the forensic shredding of that biased parasite’s throwaway summary line. the ussr has no cachet with guardian readers, so why waste time and brain power on accuracy when you could be besmirching us and our governments? this is exactly why people shouldn’t be criminalised for not ponying up the dough to these third-rate partisan hacks. nice post.
ALERT!
My god!
Has anyone seen the (B)BBC Online News front page?!?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Change of design somewhat! No other news today then! Look at the SIZE of the headline!
Did you Know this goverment is about to spend 2 billion pounds updating its own weapons of mass destruction. I am sure that the BBC will have to tell us eventually. It would have been told by the BBC before the election so we could make our own views made. But as we all seem to know now we are being MIND CONTROLED. Very sad as I did think we at some time lived in a free country. The BBC by its ommitions has not only blown its credibility now, but has blown its credibility in the past.
What do you immagine they would be reporting if the Thatcher goverment were doing this while fighting a war to stop weapons of mass destruction in other countries? Never mind what Labour back benchers, CND protesters, students,and the like would be saying,and doing.
Hang you heads in shame LEFTIES your true motives have been exposed,and will not be forgotten. WHEN the goverment changes no one will take any notice of you now. One more nail in the coffin of FREEDOM.
Stop our partisapation in this war NOW our troops are dieing for a lie. The Americans fight for Liberty and democracy. I could and would only fight for the same not a lieing politicians vanity and power. Come on lefties do you have any pride or principals left at all. Scary.
Good thing is you students are going to have to spend so much time paying back your student loans for the rest of your lives you might have to shut up anyway.
Too obvious a point to make really but how would you students have taken this abuse, if Thatcher had done this to you? Do you just like the colour red more than the colour blue, or are you all just thick?
Sorry I forgot again you had your brainwashed by The BBC and the educational establishment for 65 years. Are you feeling a little used now? you cant all be working for the BBC.
We must now ALL srutinise our goverment all the time not just at elections. Whether the BBC thinks it is alright to do so or not. Conservative or Labour.
Gary Powell – you are a RIGHTY unilateralist then, are you?
Grimer If you owned a company making fermenters, would you immediately think a customer wanted to make anthrax?
Whereas the French, Russians and Chinese knew exactly what they were doing when they exported $27,000,000,000 worth of weapons to the dictator.
Exactly.
Deaths by poison gas capture the media & public attention, but death by high explosive or torture is no less horrific. If Saddam hadn’t gassed the Kurds he would not have been short of other means of killing them.
Wasn’t someone saying something about Gresham’s Law as applied to posting, the other day?
I mant to add a ‘Hear! Hear!’
Andrew
Good post. It brings some substance to what has been apparant for a long time. Given that ‘the west’ (i.e. ‘we’) armed Saddam, according to his supporters on the left, you’d have thought that the odd M-16, Tornado, Abrams or Challenger tank or F18 would have turned up in his possession at some point. As far as I could ever see his tanks were T-whatevers and his aircraft MiGs. Oddly, these are Soviet pieces.
The fact is the Soviets/Russians, Chinese, our friends the French, Germany – hey, anyone who ever tried to keep the Baathist regime in power – armed it. Britain and the US accounts for about 0.75% of total arms sales. It’s a plain fact and the left and their friends in the media have done their best not just to cover it up but to lay the blame on Britain and the US.
…..the same equipment used to make the nerve agents sarin and tabun could be used to make aspirin tablets…..
Not that it would make any difference to Bill Clinton, he would have bombed it anyway.
Pete “As far as I could ever see his tanks were T-whatevers and his aircraft MiGs” – not to mention SCUDs
One is left to wonder why the left manages to ignore the evidence of their own eyes.
OT, but NBC’s canoe girl update:
And it would have worked, too—the artful image of a correspondent Huck Finn•ing her way through a Jersey subdivision—had two guys in hip-waders not walked through the shot moments later, at 7:02 a.m., as if on cue. Water sloshed around their ankles. Ms. Kosinski looked like a grown woman in a nice outfit paddling her way around the kiddie pool.
http://www.observer.com/printpage.asp?iid=11691&ic=NYTV
Flattering photo, gigantic outsized typeface announcing his trial as the most important story ever (apparently): Why is the Beeb lionizing Saddam Hussein?
The myth of “Western” governments supplying Saddam with arms continues in the (D)HYS on Saddam:
Saddam Hussein trial: Your views
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4357888.stm
“This trial is a OJ Simpson style showcase designed for TV. There can be no fair trial under US occupation. The trial should have been conducted under the International Court of Justice. I have no love for Saddam Hussein but I certainly hope that he exposes all of those Western politicians and companies who supplied him with the necessary arms and ammunition, including chemical weapons that were used to gas the Kurds and Iranian troops during the 1980s. I also hope that he points out that the UN Security Council sat by and said/did nothing when these acts of violence were initially perpetrated”.
Abdul M Ismail, Liverpool, UK
The B-BBC blog has today referenced the independent SIPRI as a source for the facts re weapons deliveries to Saddam. I have no reason to doubt the SIPRI figures.
Does anyone have any idea where the likes of Carole Hawley or Abdul (above) source their ‘facts’ from re suppliers of arms to Iraq?
Does a light go on inside the head of any Beeboid so-called ‘journos’ when they read who the biggest arms suppliers to Iraq were (USSR, France, China) and look at who on the UN security council has always argued most vociferously against military action being taken against Saddam? Hmm….Russia, France & China. Any ‘linkage’ there?….. ‘vested interest’……anyone…..? It’s prime meat for the likes of ‘Panorama’, ‘Newsnight’ et al to be getting into so that Hawley is laughed out of the room when she displays her ignorance or bias (or both) on the subject.
The fact is that, not only do the BBC never investigate or report these facts as motive behind the behaviour of countries approach to the war in Iraq, they state quite the opposite, aka Hawley & ‘the West’. The only possible conclusions one can draw is either Hawley made an innocent mistake, in which case she should be sent back to journo school with a copy of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines to remind herself how to put together a factual report that avoids bias by false statement, misrepresentation, omission or otherwise. OR Hawley did a ‘Gilligan’, knew that what she was saying was WRONG, that statement is ‘unfounded’ and she is guilty of breaching the BBC Guidelines on impartiality. What is Hawley’s source for the weapons statement? That should be the question her manager(s) should be asking her. Either way, action against Hawley should be taken by the BBC and to that end, I have today submitted a complaint to the BBC on this issue.
Ritter,
I have as well.
Very interesting facts. Interesting also because I think they are a supprise even to conservatives. One more example how because this propergander has been repeated so many times and for so long. That is “the wests arming of Saddam Hussain” has now become folk law. Another example how conservative activists and M.P.s have not been doing there homework and or, not had enough access to the media/BBC for a long time.
Any lefties out there that have been repeated this lie feeling even a little humbled and USED yet? They used to claim and I think still do that the media is dominated by the conservatives. I never did understand what the hell they were talking about. I wonder if there are Lefties who read this site that still believe that?
I have e-mailed the BBC whenever this discussion appears (and it reappears year in, year out).
I highlight these figures and others that give a breakdown of the items supplied to Saddam. What happens?
Nothing!
You can point out that that the infrastructure to Saddam’s Chemical Warfare industry came from Germany.
You can say that the person who was recently arrested for his part as the major supplier for chemicals is Dutch or Belgian.
(My memory fails me on this – but I’m sure the Beeb has saved their relevant news item?)
You could explain that only a lunatic would make his conscript army switch from Soviet designed weapons, easy to use and easy to maintain, to western made stuff which puts him in hock to other countries.
If you are feeling exceptionally liverish you could raise the fact that the Iraqis would not, in a million years, use the same sort of c**p that our own troops are given to fight with.
(tanks that don’t run in hot weather, guns that jam if they get dusty)
In the end I just gave up.
The ‘superior intellects’ who run the beeb prefer the myth that we armed Saddam, we supplied him with the poison gas used at Hallabja, he is our ‘creature’ and we are guilty, guilty, guilty!
(but the caring sharing BBC would like to comfort us in our hour of despair and wishes us to realise that we are, of course, not as guilty as the US of A, and the arch demon Bush who runs it)
paulc
I hope you, like many other patriotic British people, refuse to pay for the b?BCs damaging propaganda.
I think the “US armed Saddam” thing is a meme that just keeps going around as something that “everybody” just **knows**, just like the “US has no public healthcare” meme that Europeans, even pro-American ones, believe to their dying breath.
The US actually spends something like 500 billion dollars on public healthcare, including our two government-backed healthcare programs for the elderly, disabled and low income — called Medicaid and Medicare. Local and state goverments spend even more out of their own revenues, although this total will vary by region.
An itemized Federal budget is mirrored on several US websites showing the public healthcare budgets. It is easily findable by googling. You can also probably easily find each individual state’s healthcare budget by the same process (I’ve never looked myself.)
Yet how many times does the BBC repeat the incorrect meme that there are no publicly financed healthcare programs in the US? Even if they are not trying to be deliberately malicious, it never occurs to a Beeb reporter or commentator to look it up because it’s just something they think they **know**.
The same thing has happened with the arms sales to Saddam.
The left/BBC of cause know that the real thing that they hate is capitalism. That is that the Americans/west used its liquid cash to purchase oil on which they run their (terrible examples of individual freedom) cars on. Saddam then had the cash to buy arms. Indead anything HE wanted. From anyone. That may be true but can someone somewhere explane to lefties what a world where there is no liquid cash,is like.
Better still dont bother, just tell them to carry on living hear for another year and they can find out themselves. I suggest the rest of us start panicking NOW. Not even the BBC can lie about the economic data forever. Although we know Thatcher will still get the blame. Or you for not paying more tax. You silly little people. If you had given them all your money there would not be any nead for an opposition party or indead any opposition. And they could have carried traveling on their gravy train forever.
Susan
Your so right
When I have suggested to Lefties that that they dont let sick people die in the streets in America even. I normaly get screamed lier at me or get theats of violence. The last thing I get is any reconition that some one who has family there and has visited over thirty times might just know a little more about the place then them. I have asked myself how come they are so ignorent and yet so confident.
Then it came to me they get nearly every thing they think they know not from some revolutionary commi rag from colledge,but you guested it, the BBC.
More grist to the mill for BBC’s Nik Gowing & former CNN chief Eason Jordan?
A Spanish judge has issued an international arrest order for three US soldiers over the shelling of a Baghdad hotel that killed a cameraman.
Jose Couso, of Spanish TV network Telecinco, died in April 2003 when a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4357684.stm
I dont want to set myself up as some kind of Wat Tyler,(I know what happened to him) but it really is beyond then time of a peasents revolt here. The revolt happened when the goverment had increased taxes to 15% of there wealth. Tax hear now,if you also include the money they are borrowing in you childrens name V.A.T. duties inheritance tax employees national insurance,employers national insurance income tax and TV tax is 85% of our wealth. We did not revolt we voted for them again. I wonder why?
What do New Labour have that Richard 2nd did not. I think you know the answer……. the BBC.
Gary P, please heed Natalie’s message to you from yesterday morning on another thread:
“Gary Powell, Please try to ensure that your comments do not dominate the comment threads unduly.”
Please, and this applies to everyone else too, keep your contributions brief and on topic – either to the topic of the thread or at the very least to specific examples of BBC bias – we just don’t have the space or the time to cope with lengthy general rambles.
Thank you.
BBC news is second rate. Why care about quality or accuracy when your income is guaranteed?
Andrew
Sorry I may be boring you I dont think my comments are generally to long if a little fequent for your liking.I dont think at all that they are not on subject as I bring the BBC into all my comments which is more than you do. Also How can I dominate debate. I am not stopping anyone else from making a contribution when they wish,and I am not forcing anyone to read it. There is also no limit on space and you can bring in new issues as it is your blog,whenever you want.
But why should I think that someone who owns a media will not ultimately control it and those that use it. That was really my point.
Gary, I hate to intrude but if you think the BBC supports New Labour I think you need to take a short rest somewhere dark and quiet. The BBC’s full of unreconstructed middle-class 1970s lefties and the only person they hate more than Margaret Thatcher is Tony Blair.
Gary P: “I dont think my comments are generally to long if a little fequent for your liking.”
The point is what we, the blog owners, think.
Gary P: “I dont think at all that they are not on subject as I bring the BBC into all my comments which is more than you do.”
Laying all sorts of general wrongs and injustices at the door of the BBC does not count as making an on-topic comment! I don’t mind if we sometimes drift off topic as part of a discussion, so long as it’s interesting and relatively contained.
Gary P: “”Also How can I dominate debate. I am not stopping anyone else from making a contribution when they wish…”
Simply by commenting frequently and at length – it puts other people off even trying to read the comments, let alone bothering to contribute themselves.
Gary P: “and I am not forcing anyone to read it.”
Anyone who wishes to participate in the comments facility does have to read other comments first!
Please respect our requests and calm down a little!
If you really can’t contain your urges to write whenever and whatever you want please consider setting up your own blog. We’ll be happy to post a link to it.
Just occasionally Radio 4 manages to broadcast a program that’s actually worth listening to.
The honour today belongs to the doyen of PC, Libby Purves in her Midweek offering.
Guests today started with sex and shopping novelist Jackie Collins so attentive listeners were starting to nod off after over 12 minutes of …..well sex and…er shopping. Next up was Darcus Howe who makes a lucrative profession simply out of being black so we enjoyed the usual tales of deprivation and abuse. His remenices of his father, described as “a kind and gentle man… who beat him mercilessly with a strap” had echoes of a favourite Monty Python sketch(By gum we had it hard..). Eventually the tinted raconteur launched into his favourite subject, racism, describing America as “one of the most savagely racist places..” Listening to the plastic surgeons’ all time favourite, Joan Rivers launching into him with a “Where the hell are you coming from, you have such a chip on your shoulder” whilst Purves tries to quiten her down can only be described as exquisite.
Listen and enjoy.
The final guest, celebrated plant photographer, Andrea Jones brings an ending of surreal tedium that nicely rounds out the show.
This recording I will keep and cherish.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/midweek.shtml
Hilarious! My favourite bit is Joan’s parting comment: “Son of a bitch!”
I wish I had time to listen the whole thing, but unfortunately it’s time for bed.
Excellent! People, listen in!! The fun starts around 19m30s in……
We need more people like Joan Rivers. I can’t imagine any Brits having the balls to say what Joan Rivers did to Mr Darcus….
england
great post. great program. God Bless Joan Rivers.
Radford Howe; aka Darcus Owusu; aka Darcus Howe; aka The Devils’s Advocate; aka The Devil Incarnate. Changes his name often, but never his hard left politics. [Deleted] A Trinidadian and tricky daddy.
Sometimes I wish someone could hijack the Beeb’s broadcasts so that every time someone mentiones the weapons sold to Saddam by “the West” that listing of weapons that were actually sold would pop up on the TV screen. THAT would be sheer entertainment.
As for the US “contributions” to that weapons list, I recall that during the Gulf War, CNN had documentation proving that at least one of the items eventually listed as a “weapon”, the flat-bed trucks that were used as mobile launchers for the SCUD missiles, were originally sold to Saddam under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture as “farming equipment”. At least, CNN USED to have that documentary proof. They seem to have lost it in the past few years…
It just goes to show what a lot of others have said here… the fact that most manufacturers probably DIDN’T know why Saddam was buying bits of this and that, and that the purchases mostly had perfectly innocent uses.
Whilst we’re talking about the Devil’s Advocate, is it not the case that the £200m of arms supplied to Saddam by the US (and the £79m by our good selves) is hardly negligible, nor does it constitute a ‘myth’, irrespective of whatever other states behaviour may have been ‘worse’.
The criticism should be of the wholly misleading BBC coverage, not a complete exoneration of our own former governments.
Matthew Price probably thinks this is a balanced article. Poor thing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4358542.stm
What about this for example:-
“Israel is concerned that weapons may be smuggled into Gaza – weapons which could be used against Israel.”
Hasn’t he been reading the papers recently? There is no “could” about it.
And this:-
“In order to protect Israeli civilians, and the settler population, which lives in the West Bank contrary to international law, Palestinian movement is often curtailed and checked by the Israeli army.”
Notice what he inserts in this? International law. Strange that he doesn’t equate the murder of 3 Jews recently by Palestinian terrorists as contrary to “International Law.”
There is much else to deride in this unfortunate little artice.
I’ve just listened to the midweek clip – phew! My headphones nearly melted! Great clip and well done to Joan Rivers for taking her stand. As noted above, I can’t imagine a Brit getting as animated as that. “Son of a bitch!”… priceless!
OT
The Met Police in London have had to axe 400 Police vehicles in light of the extra anti terror work and associated costs.
So this just go’s to confirm, all the police are doing now is anti terror work
how about normal policing?
what the hell are we all paying for?
More to the point why hasn’t the BBC, raised this?
because its in the governments pocket thats why
For those of you who would like the mp3 version…
[audio src="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-audio//Media/audio/2005/10/19/Midweek.mp3" /]
Yes, I know its from the Guardian.
Rivers is white, Howe is black. They argue, therefore Rivers must be a racist……
Race row disrupts Radio 4 debate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4358172.stm