The BBC has spent the last 10 years or so trying to rewrite history in order to put itself in the right and Blair, Hutton and the British Army in the wrong.
The BBC now ‘reports’ unashamedly that Blair was a liar, that Hutton was a fool in the pay of a liar and that British soldiers may have been brave but they fought an illlegal war…which is why the BBC spends so much time trying to put them in prison and to get the Islamist terrorists released from prison.
We had a quick look at Jeremy Bowen’s recent FOOC piece in which he blamed the Iraq War for the rise of ISIS, a conclusion that suits the BBC’s own anti-Iraq War narrative. Never mind that ISIS was actually spawned by the Arab Spring.
The Telegraph takes a longer look and comes to a devastating conclusion about Bowen’s reporting that you may find hard to disagree with….
In truth, this account provides only an illusion of understanding. The notion that Western powers are primarily responsible for igniting the conflagrations that rage in Iraq, or elsewhere in the Middle East, is deeply misconceived.
Jeremy Bowen’s reporting only providing an ‘illusion of understanding’ and which is ‘deeply misconceived’.….still, nothing new there, just the usual standard fare we can expect from Bowen and his crew in the Middle East.
Never mind Jeremy. The Independent believes you.
At least the camera never lies. Well, unless passed through the BBC ME filter. Nice cover shot Jeremy.
http://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/time-for-change-of-job.html
Maybe it was a different time?
Jeremy Bowen is an appalling Middle East commentator.
This line that America and Britain are to “blame” for the ongoing civil war in Iraq is simplistic tripe. Yet this is the line Bowen was promoting on Today yesterday morning.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the dictatorship of the Sunni Saddam Hussein, the hostility between Shia and Sunni, the restoration of Shia majority rule in Iraq, the tensions caused by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iran v Iraq war……all forgotten.
There was war in the Middle East before the west existed as a geo political influence.
And as for Isis being a modern development….Isis represents a strand of Islam present from the beginning of that “religion”. Manifest in the invasions of the Christian Middle East and North Africa, medieval Spain, the Mughal empire, the Mahdist uprising, deobandism……the thread of jihadism runs through the entire history of Islam.
Bowen has a huge axe to grind with Israel. The BBC should have transferred him years ago.
The moral superiority is rather something to behold though…..
https://bbcwatch.org/2016/07/05/bbcs-sarona-market-attack-speculations-come-unraveled/
It never ceases to amaze what the BBC throws effort behind to show what something is to do with versus nothing to do with.
And fails on both counts so predictably. Their famous ‘balance no doubt.
The Telegraph article referred to above is a good account of how complex the origins of the Iraq situation really are. The BBC refuse to acknowledge this. Apart from the Bowen piece there was a terrible interview on Today at 8.50 am with one Alice Marne (?) who clearly hates Blair, loves Corbyn and resigned from Labour only to rejoin when the Blessed Jeremy became leader .
Marne was given a very easy time by the House left wing Muslim of Today. No difficult questions at all. Contrast that with the vicious attack interview of Stephen Crabbe earlier in the programme .
I’d like to see something on the lines of the Telegraph article seriously and sympathetically discussed on the BBC instead of its standard view on Iraq as espoused by Bowen.
Yes Blair made a huge mistake , not in going to war but in not challenging the Americans’ lack of focus on post war planning. If the US had refused to listen to this then at that point Blair should indeed have refused to join the invasion. Beyond this is the fact that Sunni- Shia conflict predates the 2003 war and the effect of the war was only to turn the balance of power in Iraq around from Sunni to Shia. Proper post war planning could have given something better than that . Finally could Saddam’s regime really have survived the later developments that swept away regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and would have toppled Assad if he was not propped up by Russia and Iran? An Iraqi civil war would have been inevitable anyway as would the rise of Sunni fundamentalism in the form of ISIS.
Totally agree. The big fault line in the ME is between Sunnis and Shias, which dates from the death of The Prophet (pbuh) in AD632. I don’t think you can blame that one on Sykes/Picot, though I’m sure Jeremy would give it a good try.
If this is the same Alice Mahon, former MP, I believe she was nicknamed “Stalin’s granny” by her colleagues. No wonder the Beeb gave her an easy ride!
Yes the correct spelling of her surname is Mahon. One quick read of her Wikipedia entry will have you reaching for the sickbag . Why would Al beeb give her an unchallenging interview to spout her Stop the War Corbynista narrative ? Oh yes it’s because they entirely agree with her.
The mistake Blair made, Merkel, et al made, was to import ****ing Muslims into Europe because they needed their votes.
Saddam Hussein sat on the Shia-Sunni powderkeg and took the fuse out.
Not a very nice man, not a regime I would like to have lived under, but he kept the peace in Iraq. Why, from the West’s point of view, remove him?
Ditto, from the West’s point of view, why not support the Shah in Iran and suppress the Ayatollahs? The USA had installed the Shah as a counterweight to the communists. Then the CIA had to start an Iraqi-Iranian war to correct this policy mistake.
Why not support Assad, another hard leader, for the same reasons?
But, no, they knew better, ignore the 1400 hundred years of fanatical, totalitarian slavery, mass murder and military aggression which is the history of Islam.
Just wave your Westerm democratic magic wand over the Middle East and North Africa and peaceful, utopian, political entities, will instantly arise as surely as night follows day. When what occurred was more mass murder, where was the Plan B? There are still “leaders” in the West who do not realise the policy was a mistake.
What the CIA should have done was killed Khomeni when he lived in France. What the CIA should be doing, accompanied by European intelligence agencies, is assassinating Imams who have been mistakenly allowed into Europe and North America. Why is anyone surprised that Imams are fomenting violence?
What we require is an iron curtain to keep Muslims out of Europe and repatriation, at gunpoint, of Muslims in Europe to the area that they, or their ancestors, came from. And stop pretending Muslims are nice, cuddly, people like ourselves.
What a mess, thank you most recent Western “leaders” for being the incompetent examples of your type, anywhere, anywhen.
They just can’t help getting a ‘blame Israel’ headline in even though they know it has absolutely nothing to do with them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36462026
For as long as I live, I will (hopelessly it seems) do everything I can to make as many people as possible aware of the truth about Islam and it’s blood thirsty and brutally oppressive doctrine.
This has absolutely nothing at all to do with people, race or humanity. This is about the power of a belief system/ideology and it’s hold over those who are literally forced under threat of death to follow it’s every instruction.
Islam means obedience and utter conformity to the will of Allah and the instructions of Muhammad… The never changing, everlasting instruction of Muhammad. Muslims undertaking Jihad in the name of Islam (in their own fucking words Jeremy!!) are doing so because Muhammad instructs them too. Muslims cannot pick and choose what to follow!! It’s why Muhammad is the final prophet and why Islam was created l Muhammad was instructed by Allah to instruct man to follow the true path, the pure life and instruction, because Judaism and Christianity had been bastardised by mankind! Muhammads instruction cannot be bastardised and cannot be just used for guidance (like we use Christianity in the West)….this is why the imams have such power in Islamic communities because Muslims cannot misinterpret the instructions of Allah otherwise they are destined for eternity in hellfire, just as all infidels are!
Islamic State is the creation and realisation of Muhammads instruction to all Muslims to live in a perfect Islamic place. All Muslims living in Islamic state are in reality living the perfect Islamic lives. All Muslims undertaking Jihad are therefore being MORE Islamic than Muslims doing nothing to fight for Islam. All the Iraq war did was take away the lunatic thst was brutally suppressing the will of Allah
Even some Arab TV stations show more of the truth about Islam.
Wow – that’s quite some reaction!! Poor guy probably sealed his own death warrant with that appearance… Explosive stuff. He is unfortunately discovering that brainwashed people don’t know they’ve been brainwashed. It also goes to show how ignorant most Muslims are of their own foundational texts: is it any surprise that Mohammed murdered prisoners, or raped a 9-year-old girl? Probably not to most of us on this board, but if you confront most Muslims with these accusations they will say you are making it up, because they are never taught, and never read, the whole Quran. To be fair, though, it is a totally unreadable book, quite unlike the Bible – no plot, no characters, all jumbled up.
Agreed Mike.
You`ll know of Robert Spencer etc at “Jihadwatch” and Bill Warner at “Political Islam”…and , as a Bible bashing Jesus Nut myself -I go to “Answering Muslims/Acts 17” and the work of David Wood.
CS Lewis once said that “pain is Gods megaphone to a deaf world”…and the corrective purgative of Islam seems to be the chosen instrument of torture of the hour.
This poor bloke (if genuine-couldn`t imagine any actor being allowed to do this) is either dead or will never be seen again…depending on whether we`re talking Pakistani or Jordanian scales of “blasphemy”.
The naivity of the interviewers was touching..this could never have happened before..whereas over here, the BBC would have quickly cut to something else.
Thanks Chris, and yes – I find Jihadwatch good, also Gatestone, Middle East Forum, and The Religion of Peace, and of course Memri TV themselves.
In terms of books, I found Bill Warner’s Two Hour Koran very good (and the series to go with it) , and as a primer I really enjoyed the layman’s view The Story of Mohammed – Islam Unveiled by Harry Richardson.
“To be fair, though, it is a totally unreadable book, quite unlike the Bible – no plot, no characters, all jumbled up.”
You mean it reads as if it were the ramblings of a mentally ill man who thought God was talking to him in a cave? Well, maybe, just maybe.
As for the poor fellow in the video, I fear for him. Some loony is sure to kill him and claim his 72 virgins, raisins, whatever. Seriously, if there is one Arab who deserves asylum, it has to be this fellow.
“Seriously, if there is one Arab who deserves asylum, it has to be this fellow.”
Indeed! Give that man a passport – now!! (Alternatively give him a 24/7 bodyguard and let him carry on preaching to the masses – he’s good!)
“You mean it reads as if it were the ramblings of a mentally ill man who thought God was talking to him in a cave? Well, maybe, just maybe.”
Well yes – but only if you first chopped it up into individual sentences and rearranged them in a random order. Seriously!!
Thinking about this a bit more, I can see why muslims would rather not know about Mohammed or the underpinnings of their religion. The thing is, what good can it do for them?
If they are born muslim in a muslim state, they are stuck with it. They cannot leave under pain of death. Finding out that The Prophet (pbuh) was a paedophile, a murderer, a rapist and an all round card carrying lunatic is of no help to them. They cannot leave the mob, they are stuck with it. It’s not so much that they cannot handle the truth, just that the truth can only make them even more miserable than they were before.
Which is a long way of saying that any nation which allows mass muslim immigration has got a serious death wish. I think a bloke from Wolverhampton alluded to it in 1968, I wonder whatever happened to him?
Too true Rob…he definitely needs to be rescued, wonder how we`d do it before the BBC handed his meltdown over to their Muslim enforcers?
Good list above there Mike-forgot about Gatestone who are excellent.
Recommend Middle East Quarterly…old pal of mine called Dennis McEoin writes for them…when we were at University, I thought he`d be shown to be wrong-boy, he was years ahead, even remember his losing his Department on a Channel 4 series-his crime was to be too critical of Islam in his Faculty, so he went and some nice Saudi chap with lots of money took over.
There you go-this was 1987.
Good shout Chris, MEQ is excellent and I’ve enjoyed your old pal’s writing there from time to time 🙂
BBC news24: going all out to attack Blair. Is this the same bBC that sacked Gilligan as he had the temerity to expose the lies and deceit of their socialist master Blair.
Yes and it is also the same BBC that gave us BLiar all over at the weekend telling us to ignore the Referendum result.
Blair: an unfortunate name, which gave rise to the age-old ditty: “Blair, Blair, pants on Fair”.
I wonder if they (media) will ever do the same over Obama. I believe far more US troops and US nationals were killed in Afghanistan, for example, than under Bush/Blair. Wikepedia (not the most definitive, I know) shows 1600+ under Obama and 515 under Bush. The same applies in Iraq, more under Obama than both Bushes.
To be fair on Barry, he did inherit the situation, also he got the Nobel Peace Prize, so there you go! No doubt BLiar and Bush jnr will receive it jointly soon.
He also snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.
And what about Clinton?
Not Hillary but Bill.
It was said in the late-1990s that Clinton was getting set for a war in the Gulf with Saddam. Anthropogenic Global Warming notwithstanding, if I recall correctly, Bill Clinton had US jets flying constant sorties over northern Iraq just begging for and egging on Saddam to take action that would be a US excuse to go after him. Seem to recall they got pretty close on a couple of occasions.
I was waiting this morning for John Humphrys to ask Blair about that in the extended TODAY interview this morning. How come TODAY can be flexible on their scheduling when it’s Blair giving us his excuses, when other important subjects on other days, whether an interview or discussion get terminated at 8.25am for the sport, or – even worse – at 8.20am for something light & irrelevant before going to the sports repeat, er .. sorry … I mean sports report.
All day today Radio 5 has been giving equal prominence to a former Prime Minister and a weepy mother of a dead soldier. Except that the former PM (Blair) has been fiercely interrogated about every decision while the woman has been allowed to act as if she should be asked if she’d like us to go to war. Never did any of the bBBC ‘reporters’ ask her “why did your son join the army if he wasn’t prepared to lay down his life for his country?”.
‘The BBC now ‘reports’ unashamedly that Blair was a liar’
Should be easy for you to provide evidence of this then………..you won’t.