This is Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news. And this is BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood. What follows is an exchange between British media analyst David Edwards and Helen Boaden, the subject being Wood's substandard performance:
December 22, 2005
Dear Helen
On tonight's BBC News at Ten, Paul Wood asserted that British and American forces "came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights".
This is a clear example of transparent, pro-government bias. Do you stand by this statement?
Presumably the views of the Iraqi people should count in determining neutral, balanced reporting on this subject. A November 2003 poll in the Washington Post found that one per cent of Iraqis believed that the goal of the invasion was to establish democracy in Iraq (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 12, 2003).
Sincerely
David Edwards
January 5, 2006
Dear Mr Edwards
Paul Wood's analysis of the underlying motivation of the coalition is borne out by many speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair.
Yours sincerely
Helen Boaden
Director, BBC News
Paul Wood's analysis is accurate, Boaden states plainly; his inclination to uncritically accept elite sources of information implicitly validated. But not so fast. In order to believe that there was a hidden, benign motivation for the unprovoked attack on Iraq - to "bring" democracy and human rights (assuming the aggressor is true to these things) - one must first plan and commit to remove the old despotic regime in Baghdad. Surely it cannot have escaped Boaden's attention that the British Government studiously avoided justifying the intervention on such grounds?
In a September 2002 parliamentary debate,
Blair said removing the regime "is not the purpose of our action; our purpose is to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction". In an interview with the Arabic service of Radio Monte Carlo in November 2002,
he stated: "So far as our objective, it is disarmament, not regime change – that is our objective. ... I have got no doubt either that the purpose of our challenge from the United Nations is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, it is not regime change." In his first monthly press conference of 2003,
Blair told journalists, "Of course no-one wants conflict, everyone would prefer this to be resolved peacefully." At his next Downing Street press conference in February,
he said: "There is no inexorable decision to go to war, but there is an inexorable decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. How that happens is up to Saddam." The same day, the Prime Minister's official spokesman explained that: "If Saddam Hussein co-operates, if he's serious about disarmament, then he can stay in power." In response to a question from Charles Kennedy,
Blair insisted: "I have always said that the purpose of any action has got to be the disarmament of Iraq of weapons of mass destruction." In a question and answer session with
Independent on Sunday readers,
he replied, "We have gone out of our way to give Saddam another chance to disarm peacefully though this means he would stay in power." And in a statement on Iraq in the House of Commons several days later,
he said: "I detest his regime - I hope most people do - but even now, he could save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully." The motion Tony Blair put down in the House of Commons asked members to support the decision "that the United Kingdom should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction". He
further told the House: "I have never put the justification for action as regime change."
Millions of people suspected,
and later it was confirmed, that regime change was indeed a component of Tony Blair's policy toward the United States. (UK residents didn't have any real say if, or how, this should happen - the Lord Blair had already made up His mind, albeit privately, and His word was to be final, and all that mattered.)
It is not uncommon for political leaders to state one thing in public while fostering and pursuing unstated policy behind closed doors. That's a fairly banal observation that very few people would disagree with. But that being so, one must concede and accept that Tony Blair lied repeatedly to parliament, the nation, and to the entire world. This conclusion requires not a single leap. Rather, it is a logical reading of the public record. Yet Helen Boaden coolly disregards this undemocratic deceit and retorts by catapulting government propaganda: Bush and Blair invaded Iraq in order to spread democracy and human rights - not because a serious examination of the available evidence supports such a contention - simply because both Blair and Bush later said so!
One might reasonably compare her critical thinking skills to that of a very small child, or perhaps her behavior is less innocent and better encapsulated in something
Edward Herman wrote recently:
The Bush rationale for the invasion-occupation of Iraq was the threat to US national security posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Saddam's brutal rule was sometimes mentioned in the course of pre-invasion demonization, but liberation and democratization were barely detectable as second or third order objectives. ... The liberation and democratization objectives were brought to the fore only after it was definitively established, and could not be hidden from public view, that the primary objectives had rested on lies, and were war-marketing claims advanced by a group determined to attack and whose "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." With the collapse of those claims something more was needed, in retrospect and to justify a continuing occupation and restructuring of Iraqi society. ... But if a group that had lied its way into an aggression-occupation subsequently shifted objectives, with the Leader now claiming a new vision and aim to democratize the world, minimal honesty and intelligence would seem to demand scepticism and a careful search for real motives and objectives. To a remarkable degree the mainstream media and intellectuals eschewed any such critical examination and took the new objectives at face value. If this is so, than "all the news fit to print" is not dictated by any quest for truth but by the demands of service to the state.
And what of any underlying motivation, if not genuine democracy and human rights? The poll cited by David Edwards was conducted by Gallup for its client, the
Washington Post.
Although 52% of those questioned said the United States desired to establish a pliable system of democratic government, a similar majority did not believe the US would allow the Iraqi people to fashion their own political future without undue pressure and influence from Washington. 5% of residents polled thought the US invaded Iraq to help the Iraqi people, 4% believed the purpose was to destroy weapons of mass destruction (the primary rationale given by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair), and
only 1% believed it was to establish democracy. Though most residents wanted rid of Saddam Hussein, 43% percent of respondents expressed the view that coalition forces invaded to gain a strategic advantage over Iraq's enormous energy resource (the largest in the world after Saudi Arabia - just one of many undemocratic US/British-backed regimes with an appalling human rights record).
Edwards responded to the BBC's director of news:
January 5, 2006
Dear Helen
That is flatly false. When British and American forces "came to Iraq in the first place" the emphasis was entirely on disarming an alleged "serious and current threat" to the West from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Only when this claim was revealed as an indefensible fraud, did Blair and, later, Bush begin emphasising "democracy and human rights".
Even if your comments had been accurate, they would have missed the point. Wood said US-UK troops "came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights". He did not say: 'Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair claim that US-UK forces came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights'. Wood was presenting as truth arguments made in "many speeches and remarks made by both Mr Bush and Mr Blair". Is it the job of objective, neutral BBC journalists to take it as read that our leaders are telling the truth? Isn't that the task of propagandists?
Sincerely
David Edwards
