Re: severe Brit losses in Iraq

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2003-06-25 08:03 +0100, you wrote:
> Further to last night's post the BBC Radio 4 programme this morning had a
> representative of the INC arguing that their contacts suggest that this was
> a one off in a village that had had a weapons inspection search by the
> British 2 days before in a Shiite region generally sympathetic to the
> allies (so the INC says!) but where there is smuggling across the border
> with Iran.

Tonight no mention of smuggling, and graphic accounts from villagers
apparently sincerely emphasising that this was a tragedy because the
British troops started firing and killed some Iraqis but emphasising the
anger and resentment about searches and other defects of "liberation". One
villager interviewed on Channel 4 rationally and explicitly saying they do
not want imperialism, they want friendship.

Clearly the British model of pacification is not such a wonderful
alternative to US neocolonisation.

With this disaster dominating the news Alastair Campbell got of the top
spot. He chose to be robust and attack the BBC, after claiming that the
"dodgy dossier" was merely a briefing document, despite the fact that Colin
Powell praised its "exquisite detail" in the Security Council. He side
stepped the question of the alteration of key phrases linking Iraq to
terrorism in other countries and merely said it was a mistake to publish it
without acknowledgement of sources. A "storm in a teacup" - as opposed to a
"complete Horlicks" according to the foreign secretary. And the suggestion
that the first dossier had been sexed up this was  lie perpetrated by the
BBC, and not the opinion of senior people in British intelligence and he
had indeed sexed it down in some places, (about humanitarian abuses - which
were not the basis for the planned war of course). But tonight the BBC is
standing by its sources, and it is not impossible that Campbell will be
invited to appear before the committee again.


Chris Burford
London