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“THIS IS THE STUPIDEST AND MOST RECKLESSLY UNDERTAKEN WAR IN MODERN TIMES”

A stupid war
By Edward W. Said
Al-Hayat
April 14, 2003

Full of contradictions, flat-out lies, groundless affirmations, the clotted media torrent of reporting and commentary on the war against Iraq (which is still being waged by something called "the coalition," whereas it is still an American war with some British help) has obscured what has been so criminally stupid about its planning, propaganda, and justifying discourse by military and policy experts. For the past two weeks, I have been traveling in Egypt and Lebanon trying to keep up with the unending stream of information and misinformation coming out of Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan, a lot of it misleadingly upbeat, but some of it horrifyingly dramatic in its import as well of course as its immediacy. The Arab satellite channels, al-Jazeera being by now the most notorious and efficient, have given on the whole a totally opposed view of the war than the standard stuff served up by "embedded" reporters – including speculations about Iraqis being killed for not fighting, mass uprisings in Basra, four or five "falls" of Umm Qasr and Faw – who have supplied grimy pictures of themselves as lost as the English-speaking soldiers they have been living with. Al-Jazeera has had reporters inside Mosul, Baghdad, Basra and Nassiriyah, one of them, the impressible Taysir Alouni, a fluent journalistic veteran of the Afghanistan war, and they have presented a much more detailed, on the spot account of the shattering realities of the heavy bombardment that has devastated Baghdad and Basra, as well as the extraordinary resistance and anger of the Iraqi population which was supposedly to have been only a sullen bunch of people waiting to be liberated and throw flowers at Clint Eastwood look-alikes.

Let's get straight to what is so unwise and sub-standard about this war, leaving aside for the moment its illegality and vast unpopularity, to say nothing about the way American wars of the past half century have been lumbering, humanly unacceptable and so utterly destructive. In the first place, no one has satisfactorily proved that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction that furnish an imminent threat to the United States. No one. Iraq is a hugely weakened and sub-par Third World state ruled by a hated despotic regime: there is no disagreement about that anywhere, least of all in the Arab and Islamic world. But that it is any kind of threat to anyone in its current state of siege is a laughable notion, one which no journalist of the overpaid legions who swarm around the Pentagon, State Department and White House has ever bothered to pursue.

Yet in theory, Iraq might have been a challenge to Israel sometime in the future, since it is the only Arab country that has the human, natural and infrastructural resources to take on not so much America's but rather Israel's arrogant brutality. This is why Begin's air force bombed Iraq preemptively in 1981. Note therefore the creeping replication of Israeli assumptions and tactics (all of them, as I shall be showing, remarkably flawed) in what the U.S. has been planning and implementing in its current post 9/11 campaign or preemptive war. How regrettable that the media has been so timorous in not investigating the Likud's slow taking-over of U.S. military and political thinking about the Arab world. So fearful has everyone been of the charge of anti-Semitism bandied about recklessly, even by Harvard's president, such that the neo-conservative cum Christian Right cum Pentagon civilian hawks stranglehold on American policy has become a sort of reality forcing on the entire country an attitude of total belligerency and free floating hostility. One would have thought that but for America's global dominance we would have been headed for another Holocaust.

Nor, second, could it have been true by any normal human standard that Iraq's population would have welcomed the American forces that entered the country after a terrifying aerial bombardment. But that that preposterous notion became one of the lynchpins of U.S. policy is testament to the outright rubbish fed the Administration by the Iraqi opposition (many of whom were out of touch with their country as well as keen on promoting their post-war careers by persuading the Americans of how easy an invasion would be) and the two accredited Orientalist experts identified long ago as having the most influence over American Middle East policy, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami.

Now in his late eighties, Lewis came to the U.S. about thirty-five years or so ago to teach at Princeton where his fervent anti-communism and sarcastic disapproval of everything (except modern Turkey) about the modern Arabs and Islam pushed him to the forefront in the pro-Israel battles of the last years of the twentieth century. An old-fashioned Orientalism, he was quickly bypassed by advances in the social sciences and humanities that formed a new generation of scholars who treated the Arabs and Islam as living subjects rather than as backward natives. For Lewis, vast generalizations about the whole of Islam and the civilizational backwardness of "the Arabs" were viable routes to the truth, which was available only to an expert like him. Common sense about human experience was out, whereas resounding pronouncements about the clash of civilizations were in (Huntington found his lucrative concept in one of Lewis's more strident essays about the "return of Islam"). A generalist and ideologue who resorted to etymology to make his points about Islam and the Arabs, Lewis found a new audience within the American Zionist lobby to whom in journals such as Commentary and later The New York Review of Books he addressed his tendentious pontifications that basically reinforced the prevailing negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.

What made Lewis's work so appalling in its effects was the fact that without any other views to counter his, American (policy-makers in particular) fell for them. That plus the icy distance and superciliousness of his manner made Lewis an "authority" even though he hadn't entered, much less lived in, the Arab world in decades. His last book What Went Wrong? became a post-9/11 bestseller and, I am told, required reading for the U.S. military, despite its vacuousness and unsupported, usually factually incorrect, statement about the Arabs during the past 500 years. Reading the book, you get an idea that the Arabs are a useless bunch of backward primitives, easier to attack and destroy than ever before.

Lewis also formulated the equally fraudulent thesis that there were three concentric circles in the Middle East – countries with pro-American people and governments (Jordan, Egypt and Morocco), those with pro-American people and anti-American governments (Iraq and Iran), and those with anti-American governments and people (Syria and Libya). All of this, it would be seen, gradually crept its way into Pentagon planning, especially as Lewis kept spewing out his simplistic formulae on television and in articles for the right-wing press. Hence, Arabs wouldn't fight, they don't know how, they would welcome us, and above all, they were totally susceptible to whatever power American could bring to bear.

Ajami is a Lebanese Shiite educated in the U.S. who first made his name as a pro-Palestinian commentator. By the mid-1980s, he had become a professor at Johns Hopkins and a fervent anti-Arab nationalist ideologue, who was quickly adopted by the right-wing Zionist lobby (he now works for people like Martin Peretz and Mort Zuckerman) and groups like the Council of Foreign Relations. He is fond of describing himself as a non-fiction Naipaul and quotes Conrad while actually sounding as hokey as Khalil Jibran. In addition, Ajami has a penchant for catchy one-liners, ideally suited for television, if not for reflective thought. The author of two or three ill-informed and tendentious books, he has become influential because as a "native informant" he can harangue TV viewers with his venom while demoting the Arabs to the status of sub-human creatures whose world and actuality doesn't matter to anyone. Ten years ago, he started deploying "we" as a righteous imperial collectivity that along with Israel never does anything wrong. Arabs are to blame for everything and therefore deserve "our" contempt and hostility.

Iraq has drawn out his special venom. He was an early advocate of the 1991 war and has, I think, deliberately misled the basically ignorant American strategic mind into believing that "our" power can set things straight. Dick Cheney quoted him in a major speech last August as saying that Iraqis would welcome "us" as liberators in "the streets of Basra," which still fights on as I write. Like Lewis, Ajami hasn't been a resident of the Arab world for years, although he is rumored to be close to the Saudis, of whom he has reasonably spoken as models for the Arab world's future governance.

If Ajami and Lewis are the leading intellectual figures in U.S. Middle East planning, one can only wince at how even more banal and weak-minded policy hacks in the Pentagon and White House have spun out such "ideas" into the scenario for a quick romp in a friendly Iraq. The State Department, after a long Zionist campaign against its so-called "Arabists" is purged of any countervailing views, and Colin Powell, it should be remembered, is little more than a dutiful servant of power. So because of its potential for anti-Israel troublemaking, Saddam's Iraq was targeted for military and political termination, quite irrespective of its history, its complicated society, its internal dynamics and contradictions. Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle said exactly that when they were consultants to Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996 election campaign. Saddam Hussein is of course an awful tyrant, but it isn't as if, for instance, most Iraqis haven't suffered terribly due to the U.S. sanctions and were far from willing to accept more punishment on the off chance that they would be "liberated." After such liberation, what forgiveness? After all, look at the war against Afghanistan, which also featured bombing and peanut butter sandwiches. Yes, Karzai is now in power of a very iffy kind, but the Taliban, the Pakistani secret services, and the poppy fields are all back, as are the warlords. Hardly a brilliant blueprint to follow in Iraq, which doesn't resemble Afghanistan very much anyway.

The expatriate Iraqi opposition has always been a motley bunch. Its leader Ahmad Chalabi is a brilliant man now wanted for embezzlement in Jordan and without a real constituency beyond Paul Wolfowitz's Pentagon office. He and his helpers (e.g. the thoroughly shabby Kanan Makiya who has said that the merciless high-altitude U.S. bombing of his native land is "music to my ears") plus a few ex-Baathists, Shiite clerics and others have also sold the U.S. administration a bill of goods about quick wars, deserting soldiers, cheering crowds, equally unsupported by evidence or lived experience. One can't, of course, fault these people for wanting to rid the world of Saddam Hussein: we'd all be better off without him. The problem has been the falsifying of reality and the creation of either ideological or metaphysical scenarios for basically ignorant and unchecked American policy planners to foist undemocratically on a fundamentalist president and a largely misinformed public. In all, this Iraq might as well have been the moon and the Pentagon and White House Swift's Academy of Lagado.

Other racists premises underlying the campaign in Iraq are such thought-stopping propositions as having the power to redraw the Middle East map, setting in motion a "domino-effect" in bringing democracy there, and holding fast to the assumption that the Iraqi people constitute a kind of tabula rasa on which to inscribe the ideas of William Kristol, Robert Kagan and other far right deep thinkers. As I have said in an earlier article for the LRB, such ideas were first tried out by Ariel Sharon in Lebanon during the 1982 invasion, and then again in Palestine since he took office two years ago. There's been lots of destruction but little else in security and peace and subaltern compliance to show for it. Nevermind: well-trained U.S. Special Forces have practiced and perfected the storming of civilian homes with Israeli soldiers in Jenin. It is hard to believe, as the ill-conceived Iraq war advances, that things will be much different than that bloody episode, but with other countries like Syria and Iran involved, shaky regimes shaken more, general Arab outrage inflamed to the boiling point, one cannot imagine that victory in Iraq will resemble any of the simple-minded myths posited by Bush and his little clique.

But what is truly puzzling is that the regnant American ideology is still undergirded by the view that U.S. power is fundamentally benign and altruistic. This surely accounts for the outrage expressed by U.S. pundits and officials that Iraqis had the gall to undertake resistance at all, or that when captured, U.S. soldiers are exhibited on Iraqi TV. The practice is much worse a) than bombing markets and whole cities and b) than showing rows of Iraqi prisoners made to kneel or lie spread-eagled face down in the sand. All of a sudden, the Geneva Convention are involved not for Camp X-Ray but for Saddam, and when his forces hide inside cities, that is cheating, whereas carpet bombing from 30,000 feet is playing fair.

This is the stupidest and most recklessly undertaken war in modern times. It is all about imperial arrogance unschooled in worldliness, unfettered either by competence or experience, undeterred by history or human complexity, unrepentant in brutal violence and cruel electronic gadgetry. To call it "faith-based" is to give faith an even worse name that it already has. With its too-long and vulnerable supply lines, its lurching from illiterate glibness to blind military pounding, its poorly planned logistical inadequacy and its slick wordy self-explanations, the U.S. war against Iraq is almost perfectly embodied by poor George Bush's groping to stay on cue and on top of the texts they've prepared for him and which he can scarcely read, and Rummy Rumsfeld's wordy petulance, sending out lots of young soldiers either to die or to kill as many people as possible. What winning, or for that matter losing, such a war will ultimately entail is almost literally unthinkable. But pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally "liberated."

FULL ARTICLES

CORRUPTION AT CNN

Corruption at CNN
By Peter Collins
The Washington Times
April 15, 2003

Mr. Eason Jordan's admission that CNN had to suppress the news from Baghdad in order to report it brought back memories for me.

In January 1993, I was in Baghdad as a reporter for CNN on a probationary, three-month contract. Previously, I had been a war reporter for CBS News in Vietnam and East Asia and in Central America for ABC News. I had also made three trips to Baghdad for ABC News before the Gulf War.

Now, Bill Clinton was about to be inaugurated and there was speculation that Saddam Hussein might "test" the new American president. Would the new administration be willing to enforce the "no-fly" zones set up in northern and southern Iraq after the Gulf War?

CNN had made its reputation during the war with its exclusive reports from Baghdad. Shortly after my arrival, I was surprised to see CNN President Tom Johnson and Eason Jordan, then chief of international news gathering, stride into the al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad. They were there to help CNN bid for an exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein, timed to coincide with the coming inauguration of President Clinton.

I took part in meetings between the CNN executives and various officials purported to be close to Saddam. We met with his personal translator; with a foreign affairs adviser; with Information Minister Latif Jassim; and with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

In each of these meetings, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan made their pitch: Saddam Hussein would have an hour's time on CNN's worldwide network; there would be no interruptions, no commercials. I was astonished. From both the tone and the content of these conversations, it seemed to me that CNN was virtually groveling for the interview.

The day after one such meeting, I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first "live shot" on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. "Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera," he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan.

The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister's points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. "You were a bit flat there, Peter," he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein's propaganda.

The next day, I was CNN's reporter on a trip organized by the Ministry of Information to the northern city of Mosul. "Minders" from the ministry accompanied two busloads of news people to an open, plowed field outside Mosul. The purpose was to show us that American warplanes were bombing "innocent Iraqi farmers." Bits of American ordinance were scattered on the field. One large piece was marked "CBU." I recognized it as the canister for a Cluster Bomb Unit, a weapon effective against troops in the open, or against "thin-skinned" armor. I was puzzled. Why would U.S. aircraft launch CBUs against what appeared to be an open field? Was it really to kill "innocent Iraqi farmers?" The minders showed us no victims, no witnesses. I looked around. About 2000 yards distant on a ridgeline, two radar dishes were just visible against the sky. The ground was freshly plowed. Now, I understood. The radars were probably linked to Soviet-made SA-6 surface-to-air missiles mounted on tracks, armored vehicles, parked in the field at some distance from the dishes to keep them safe. After the bombing, the Iraqis had removed the missile launchers and had plowed the field to cover the tracks.

On the way back to Baghdad, I explained to other reporters what I thought had happened, and wrote a report that was broadcast on CNN that night.

The next day, Brent Sadler, CNN's chief reporter at the time in Baghdad (he is now in northern Iraq), came up to me in a hallway of the al Rasheed Hotel. He had been pushing for the interview with Saddam and had urged Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan to come to Baghdad to help seal the deal. "Petah," he said to me in his English accent, "you know we're trying to get an interview with Saddam. That piece last night was not helpful."

So, we were supposed to shade the news to get an interview with Saddam?

As it happens, CNN never did get that interview. A few months later, I had passed my probationary period and was contemplating my future with CNN. I thought long and hard; could I be comfortable with a news organization that played those kinds of games? I decided, no, I could not, and resigned.

In my brief acquaintance with Mr. Jordan at CNN, I formed the impression of a decent man, someone with a conscience. On the day Mr. Jordan published his piece in the New York Times, a panel on Fox News was discussing his astonishing admissions. Brit Hume wondered, "Why would he ever write such a thing?" Another panelist suggested, "Perhaps his conscience is bothering him." Mr. Eason, it should be.

Peter Collins has more than 30 years of experience in broadcast news, including outlets such as the Voice of America, BBC, CBS, ABC and CNN.

CNN’S DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN

CNN's disinformation campaign
Editorial
The Washington Times
April 15, 2003

Yesterday, CNN executive Eason Jordan claimed that the network had not covered up evidence of atrocities in Saddam Hussein's Iraq because it wanted to ensure access, but because it was worried about putting people's lives in danger. Writing on today's Op-Ed page, former CNN Baghdad correspondent Peter Collins, who personally witnessed Mr. Jordan and network President Tom Johnson unsuccessfully begging for an interview with Saddam, makes a strong case that Mr. Jordan is lying when he denies that ensuring access was a motive for CNN's shading of the truth on Iraq.

Mr. Collins writes that in January 1993, he participated in meetings in Baghdad between CNN executives and various officials close to Saddam, among them Tariq Aziz, during which Messrs. Jordan and Johnson made their pitch for an exclusive interview with the Iraqi dictator. "From both the tone and the content of these conversations, it seemed to me that CNN was virtually grovelling for the interview," Mr. Collins writes. At one point, the CNN executives offered Saddam an hour's worth of time on the network without commercial interruption.

Mr. Collins adds that, the day following one such meeting, he was preparing to do a "live shot" when a producer handed him some notes, telling him that Mr. Johnson wanted them read on camera. The notes were an item-by-item summary of points that had been dictated by the Iraqi information minister. Mr. Collins was forced to read those propaganda points on the air verbatim, without providing any context. Moments later, Mr. Johnson reproached him for not sounding sufficiently enthusiastic while "reporting" what the Iraqis told CNN to say. Mr. Collins adds that, the following day, when he factually reported that Iraqi charges that American war planes were bombing "innocent Iraqi farmers" were false (it turned out that the "farm" in question was most likely a location for Iraqi missile batteries), CNN correspondent Brent Sadler rebuked him for hindering the network's chances of landing an interview with Saddam.

In short, contrary to the assertions made by Mr. Jordan, the facts presented by Mr. Collins strongly suggest that CNN's coverage of Iraq was largely dictated by concerns about currying favor with Saddam Hussein in an effort to win an exclusive interview with the dictator. No careful viewer can trust CNN's reporting on international affairs.

CNN KNEW

CNN knew
Editorial
The Washington Times
April 14, 2003

Mr. Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, published in the New York Times a truly rare article last Friday: an op-ed capable of genuinely shocking even world-weary cynics in a jaded world. He announced that, over the last dozen years: "I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard... awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

He went on to catalogue in horrid detail the abuses of Saddam's torture and murder machine. He wrote that Saddam's eldest son Uday "told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate his two brothers-in-law who had defected and also ... King Hussein of Jordan." The CNN news executive tipped off the king, but not the brothers-in-law, who were subsequently murdered.

In one of his most revealing statements, Mr. Jordan wrote that: "I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed." He concluded by writing that "I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me ... At last, these stories can be told freely."

Where to begin? First, as the chief news executive of the only truly worldwide television news network, Mr. Jordan was literally the one man in the entire world in a position to "unbottle" those awful truths. Moreover, those awful truths were not only newsworthy, but would have been history-making – had they been reported. One can only imagine the impact on the U.N. debate of last winter if CNN had headlined that several Iraqi officials had told CNN that "Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed." Instead, the world got CNN reports balanced carefully – we know now, thanks to Mr. Jordan – between the truth and the requirements of Saddam's propaganda office.

So deeply had Mr. Jordan morally compromised himself and CNN that Uday the psychopath felt comfortable confiding his highest-visibility murder plans to Mr. Jordan. His secrets were safe with CNN. What a scoop they missed: "Son of Saddam Hussein plans to murder King of Jordan." Indeed, the entire Arab world might have turned on Saddam years ago if that story had been reported. But, of course, if CNN had reported that story, it would not have been able to keep open its Baghdad bureau – and thus would have lost the profitable competitive advantage it maintained over rival news outlets.

For the last twelve years, CNN has provided the West with the dominant news image of Saddam's Iraq. It was the jewel in the crown of CNN's international reporting reputation. But, now we know, from the unwitting pen of CNN's morally obtuse chief news executive, that it was always a false image CNN was broadcasting. The hard news was kept secret. The propaganda flowed like wine. CNN was running a straight propaganda-for-profits deal with Saddam. Until CNN brings in honest news executives, no prudent viewer should trust CNN's current and future reporting from other foreign capitals.

“CNN’S ACCESS OF EVIL”

"CNN's access of evil"
By Franklin Foer
Wall Street Journal
April 14, 2003

As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated. On the New York Times' op-ed page on Friday, Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some "awful things" about the Baathist regime – murders, tortures, assassination plots – that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

Of course, Mr. Jordan may feel he deserves a pinch of credit for coming clean like this. But this admission shouldn't get him any ethical journalism trophies. For a long time, CNN denied that its coverage skimped on truth. While I researched a story on CNN's Iraq coverage for the New Republic last October, Mr. Jordan told me flatly that his network gave "a full picture of the regime." In our conversation, he challenged me to find instances of CNN neglecting stories about Saddam's horrors. If only I'd had his Times op-ed!

Would that this were an outbreak of honesty, however belated. But it isn't. If it were, Mr. Jordan wouldn't be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry – and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships. For CNN, the highest prize is "access," to score live camera feeds from a story's epicenter. Dictatorships understand this hunger, and also that it provides blackmail opportunities. In exchange for CNN bureaus, dictatorships require adherence to their own rules of reportage. They create conditions where CNN – and other U.S. media – can do little more than toe the regime's line.

The Iraq example is the telling one. Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf has turned into an international joke, but the operation of his ministry was a model of totalitarian efficiency. The ministry compiled dossiers on U.S. journalists. It refused to issue visas to anyone potentially hostile – which meant that it didn't issue visas to reporters who strayed from al-Sahhaf's talking points. CNN correspondents Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour and Richard Roth, to name a few, were banned for critical reporting. It didn't take much to get on this list. A reporter who referred to "Saddam" (not "President Saddam Hussein") was shut out for "disrespect." If you didn't cover agitprop, like Saddam's 100% victory in October's referendum, the ministry made it clear that you were out.

Leaving, however, might have been preferable to staying under these conditions. Upon arrival in Iraq, journalists contended with constant surveillance. Minders obstructed their every move, dictated camera angles, and prevented unauthorized interviews. When the regime worried that it had lost control of a journalist, it resorted to more heavy-handed methods. Information ministry officials would wake journalists in the dead of night, drive them to government buildings, and denounce them as CIA plants. The French documentary filmmaker Joel Soler described to me how his minder took him to a hospital to ostensibly examine the effects of sanctions, but then called in a nurse with a long needle "for a series of blood tests." Only Mr. Soler's screaming prevented an uninvited jab.

With so little prospect for reporting the truth, you'd think that CNN and other networks would have stopped sending correspondents into Iraq. But the opposite occurred. Each time the regime threatened to pull the plug, network execs set out to assiduously reassure them. Mr. Jordan made 13 of these trips.

To be fair, CNN was not the only organization to play this game. But as the network of record, soi-disant, they have a longer trail than most. It makes rich reading to return to transcripts and compare the CNN version of Iraq with the reality that has emerged. For nearly a decade, the network gave credulous treatment to orchestrated anti-U.S. protests. When Saddam won his most recent "election," CNN's Baghdad reporter Jane Arraf treated the event as meaningful: "The point is that this really is a huge show of support" and "a vote of defiance against the United States." After Saddam granted amnesty to prisoners in October, she reported, this "really does diffuse one of the strongest criticisms over the past decades of Iraq's human-rights records."

For long stretches, Ms. Arraf was American TV's only Baghdad correspondent. Her work was often filled with such parrotings of the Baathist line. On the Gulf War's 10th anniversary, she told viewers, "At 63, [Saddam] mocks rumors he is ill. Not just standing tall but building up. As soon as the dust settled from the Gulf War, and the bodies were buried, Iraq began rebuilding." She said little about human-rights violations, violent oppression, or festering resentment towards Saddam. Scouring her oeuvre, it is nearly impossible to find anything on these defining features of the Baathist epoch.

Reading Mr. Jordan now, you get the impression that CNN had no ethical option other than to soft-pedal. But there were alternatives. CNN could have abandoned Baghdad. Not only would they have stopped recycling lies, they could have focused more intently on obtaining the truth about Saddam. They could have diverted resources to Kurdistan and Jordan (the country), where recently arrived Iraqis could speak without fear of death. They could have exploited exile groups with underground contacts.

There's another reason why Mr. Jordan doesn't deserve applause. He says nothing about the lessons of Baghdad. After all, the network still sends correspondents to such countries as Cuba, Burma and Syria, ruled by dictators who impose media "guidelines." Even if CNN ignores the moral costs of working with such regimes, it should at least pay attention to the practical costs. These governments only cooperate with CNN because it suits their short-term interests. They don't reward loyalty. It wasn't surprising, then, that the Information Ministry booted CNN from Baghdad in the war's first days. In a way CNN's absence at this pivotal moment provides a small measure of justice: The network couldn't use its own cameras to cover the fall of a regime that it had treated with such astonishing respect.

(Mr. Foer, an associate editor of The New Republic, is the author of "Soccer Explains the World," to be published soon by HarperCollins.)

CRAVEN NEWS NETWORK

Craven news network
By Eric Fettmann
New York Post
April 12, 2003

CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan yesterday revealed that his network had refused for years to report what it knew about Saddam Hussein's murderous atrocities – even against its own journalists. This astonishing confession doesn't just undermine CNN's claim to be "the most trusted name in news" – it wreaks incalculable damage on all journalists' ability to be trusted by the American people.

In a New York Times op-ed piece, Jordan disclosed that over the past dozen years CNN kept a tight lid on "awful things that could not be reported, because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

In return for its silence, CNN was allowed to maintain a permanent Baghdad bureau – long the only one by a U.S. network in the Iraqi capital.

But to what point – if the only way to keep the bureau working was to soft-pedal Saddam's horrors? If you can't report the truth, why have journalists there in the first place?

It's like saying that the best interests of journalism would have justified suppressing stories on the Holocaust during World War II in order to keep a U.S. news bureau in Berlin so as to be able to tell Nazi Germany's side of the story.

Until yesterday, CNN long insisted that its arrangement with Saddam Hussein and his henchmen did not impair its ability to report freely.

"CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine," Jordan told NPR's Bob Garfield last October. "It's prepared to be forthright, is forthright in its reporting. We wouldn't have a team in northern Iraq right now if we didn't want to upset the Saddam Hussein regime."

Perhaps.

But even Peter Arnett, who became a star reporting from Baghdad during the first Gulf War, conceded to The New Republic's Franklin Foer last fall that "there's a quid pro quo for being there [in Baghdad]. You go in and they control what you do... So you have no option other than to report the opinion of the government of Iraq."

Foer's devastating piece detailed how Western reporters – CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, chief among them – would "mimic the Ba'ath Party line" in a "go along to get along" strategy.

And, in fact, CNN worked long and hard over the years to convince Saddam's regime that it could trust the cable network.

In a remarkable on-air exchange in 1996, after Deputy Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz said Arnett would only be allowed back into Baghdad "if you promise that you will give candid, objective, fair coverage," CNN anchor Bernard Shaw replied: "We have no axes to grind, we don't support any particular government," then pleaded with Aziz to let CNN "enter your country so that we can report both sides of the story."

But as we now know, thanks to its chief news executive, that's not what CNN had in mind.

Among the stories suppressed by CNN, according to Jordan:

* A CNN Iraqi cameraman was kidnapped by Saddam's secret police, then beaten and subjected to electroshock torture for weeks.

* Other Iraqis working for Western press organizations similarly disappeared - some for good.

* A Kuwaiti woman who had spoken with CNN was beaten daily for months in front of her father, then had her body torn limb from limb, the parts left in a bag on her family's doorstep.

* Uday Hussein boasted directly to Jordan that he would assassinate his two brothers-in-law, who had defected. Months later, both men were lured back and killed.

Indeed, CNN's silence seems to have cost as many lives as it may have saved.

What did it show instead? Foer notes such stories as a series of public "demonstrations" for Sadam's 65th birthday. "Everyone knows they're a sham," one Western journalist told Foer, "but CNN in Atlanta is telling [correspondent] Nic Robertson that he has to file a story, so he shows the demonstration."

Selling such propaganda as news is problematic enough. Keeping quiet about the real news – torture, initimidation and murder – makes a mockery of journalists' professed responsibility to be a truth-teller.

That's the problem with Faustian bargains – like the one Eason Jordan and CNN made with Saddam Hussein to keep CNN reporting from Baghdad. Ultimately, it means the devil takes possession of your soul for eternity.

“SADDAM’S SILENT COLLABORATORS”

"Saddam's silent collaborators"
By Margaret Wente
Globe and Mail (Canada)
April 15, 2003

Last week, I learned there was a children's prison in Baghdad where they locked up the kids of parents deemed disloyal to the regime.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. As more and more information emerges about Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we're learning how awful it really was. Still, I was stunned. What kind of regime locks up and tortures children?

In its scale and sadism, the regime's brutality went way beyond the cruelty of your average police state. It lasted for 20 years. Saddam's rule of terror ought to have sparked international outrage years ago. But it never did. Why not?

The standard answer is, the world didn't really know how bad it was. Yet these atrocities were no secret. They were known to anyone familiar with the regime, including Western governments, the United Nations, weapons inspectors and, yes, human-rights organizations. Yet all these institutions had other interests that apparently outweighed their concerns about the imprisonment and torture of children.

Some of the major media knew, too. In a stunning piece called The News We Kept to Ourselves, published last Friday in The New York Times, CNN news chief Eason Jordan reveals that the network never did come clean on everything it knew about Iraq. It never told its viewers that local CNN employees were abducted and tortured. It never passed along what Mr. Jordan learned on some of the 13 trips he made to Baghdad to schmooze with the regime in exchange for reporters' visas. On one trip, Saddam's son Uday told him he planned to kill his two brothers-in-law (he did). On other trips, Iraqi officials told Mr. Jordan Saddam was a maniac who had to be removed.

"I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me," he confessed. But he says CNN had to keep quiet in order to protect its employees.

The way others see it, CNN had to keep quiet in order to protect its access. In their view, CNN soft-pedalled the horrors of the regime so it could keep broadcasting from Iraq. In this, it was not alone. That's the usual quid pro quo for reporting on dictators, and Iraq was unusually vigilant in the way it kept tabs on the media. Every foreign journalist was tended by an official minder; if the regime didn't like their stories, they were kicked out.

Even Peter Arnett (who ended his network career by appearing on Iraqi TV) acknowledged the quid pro quo. "You go in and they control what you do," he told The New Republic's Franklin Foer last fall. "So you have no option other than to report the opinion of the government of Iraq." Perhaps that's why we got so much straight-faced coverage of massive anti-U.S. rallies.

Naturally, it was hard for journalists to get at the truth. But there were other ways. The world is full of exiles who fled Saddam's horrors, and bear his scars. Yet no one was very interested in what they had to say. Even outfits such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which did document some of Saddam's horrors, seemed more interested in scourging the West over sanctions than exposing the regime's abuses.

The reason is, they didn't want their evidence to be used for an end they opposed, such as regime change.

Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter illustrates this attitude. He knew about the children's prison because his team inspected it in 1998. He once said it was the most horrific thing he had seen. "Probably 200 kids from toddlers to 12-year-olds. The stench was unreal – urine, feces, vomit, sweat. The kids were howling and dying of thirst. We threw water in there, but the Iraqis probably took the water out afterwards."

But now that Mr. Ritter has become a peace crusader, he doesn't want to talk about it. "Actually, I'm not going to describe what I saw there," he told Time this week, "because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace."

Many people in the peace movement excuse these evasions by claiming we knew all these things all along. But I had no idea. Did you? The human-rights violations and widespread oppression of Saddam's regime are among the most underreported stories of the past decade.

As for the other parties in the know, there are the usual dreary reasons. They had their commercial interests to consider. After Saddam gassed the Kurds, for example, the U.S. decided to overlook his bad manners to protect its lucrative Midwestern agricultural exports (it's all about wheat). He made France and Germany rich, too. They were Iraq's biggest suppliers of munitions, equipment and chemical agents useful for making poison gas. As for the UN, it had no interest in Saddam's abuses because too many of its members supported him.

All of them, every one, heard the children's screams. But they kept it to themselves.

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH EASON JORDAN FROM NPR’S WNYC AFFILIATE STATION

Transcript of Interview with Eason Jordan from NPR's WNYC affiliate station
October 25, 2002

BOB GARFIELD: After journalists were expelled from Iraq on Thursday, CNN head of news-gathering Eason Jordan, called the move "a Draconian measure that will sharply curtail the world's knowledge about what is happening in Iraq. Iraq is often displeased with CNN," says Jordan, "but especially this week when the network reported from the scene of that extraordinary protest in Baghdad."

EASON JORDAN: The big beef was that we reported that gunfire was used to disperse the demonstrators which is absolutely irrefutable fact, but the Iraqi government sometimes denies the facts and refuses to acknowledge the truth.

BOB GARFIELD: Well what kind of weird conversation is it with the Iraqi officials that you're having when you're holding up a, a piece of videotape and saying this is black and they're saying no, no that's white. It's bizarre!

EASON JORDAN: Well there are a lot of bizarre things in Iraq, and unfortunately the Iraqi officials refuse to look at the videotape because they said they didn't care what it showed or what was heard on the tape because the reality -the Iraqi reality – was very different from the actual facts.

BOB GARFIELD: I'm sure you have seen Franklin Foer's article in The New Republic which charges that the Western press is appeasing the Iraqi regime in order to maintain its visas – to be there reporting should a war ultimately break out. What's your take on that?

EASON JORDAN: The writer clearly doesn't have a clear understanding of the realities on the ground because CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine; that it's prepared to be forthright; is forthright in its reporting. We wouldn't have a team in northern Iraq right now if we didn't want to upset the Saddam Hussein regime. We wouldn't report on the demonstration if we didn't want to upset the Saddam Hussein regime. We wouldn't have been thrown out of Iraq already 5 times over the last several years if we were there to please the Saddam Hussein regime. So the story was lopsided, unfair and chose to ignore facts that would refute the premise of the article.

BOB GARFIELD: Well what is the calculus? In the New Republic article he cites the coverage of Saddam Hussein's birthday by CNN which he deemed to be not a huge news event. Are you tossing bones to Saddam Hussein in order to be there when, when it really matters?

EASON JORDAN: No. I don't think that's the case at all. Now, there is Iraqi propaganda that is news! I mean there is propaganda from a lot of governments around the world that is newsworthy and we should report on those things. Saddam Hussein's birthday is a big deal in that country. We're not reading Iraqi propaganda; we're reporting as an independent news organization.

BOB GARFIELD: Back in '91 CNN and Peter Arnett in particular were heavily criticized, mostly by civilians, for reporting from within Baghdad during the U.S. attack in ways that they'd consider to be utter propaganda and to – out of context and not reflecting the overall reality of Saddam Hussein' regime. Have you analyzed what you can get access to without appearing to be just a propaganda tool for Saddam?

EASON JORDAN: Well absolutely. I mean we work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there; but we do think that some light is better than no light whatsoever. I think that the world, the American people will be shortchanged if foreign journalists are kicked out, because even in Peter Arnett's case there were things that he reported on – and this is a long time ago now – but things he reported on that I don't think would have been reported at all had he not been there. We feel committed to our Baghdad presence. We've had a bureau there for 12 years with occasional interruptions when we've been thrown out, but we're not there to please the Iraqi government – we're not there to displease the Iraqi government – we're just there to do our job.

BOB GARFIELD: Let's say there's an – a second Gulf War. Is that the mother of all stories? Do you have to be there? Are there – decisions you'll make on the margins to be as certain as you possibly can that you will have a presence there?

EASON JORDAN: We'd very much like to be there if there's a second war; but – we are not going to make journalistic compromises in an effort to make that happen, being mindful that in wartime there is censorship on all sides, and we're prepared to deal with a certain amount of censorship as long as it's not – extreme, ridiculous censorship where – which we've actually seen a number of cases in previous conflicts – not just with Iraq. But – sure! We want to be there, but it's – we don't want to be there come hell or high water. We want to be there if we can be there and operate as a responsible news organization.

BOB GARFIELD: Very well. Eason Jordan, thank you very much.

EASON JORDAN: Okay, thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Eason Jordan is the chief news executive and news-gathering president for CNN News Group. He joined us from CNN studios in Atlanta.

FULL ARTICLES

THE NEWS WE KEPT TO OURSELVES

The news we kept to ourselves
By Eason Jordan
The New York Times
April 11, 2003

Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard - awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

(Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.)

CHARGES AGAINST REGIME’S MOST WANTED MEN

Charges against regime's most wanted men
The Guardian
April 11, 2003

Since Ali Hassan al-Majid, otherwise known as Chemical Ali, is presumed dead, these are the 10 names likely to head the most wanted list. They include those targeted by both the Americans and Indict, a British organisation which has collected evidence of crimes committed by leaders of the Iraqi regime.

Saddam Hussein:

President of Iraq since 1979. Invaded Iran and Kuwait. Authorised the development of chemical weapons. There are witness statements saying he personally shot batches of Kurdish prisoners with a Browning pistol.

Uday Hussein:

Saddam's 38-year-old son. Commander of Saddam Fedayeen forces and head of Iraq's National Olympic Committee. Believed to have tortured victims using electric shocks and to have ordered people to be killed in acid baths.

Qusay Hussein:

Saddam's younger son but his chosen successor. In charge of the Special Republican Guard and Iraqi intelligence and security services. Alleged to have selected prisoners for execution; once supervised mass killings where inmates were dropped into a machine used for shredding plastic.

Izzat Ibrahim:

Vice-chairman of the revolutionary command council and military commander of the northern region of Iraq. Oversaw the mass execution of detainees, according to survivors, including one occasion when 170 people were shot in a day.

Tariq Aziz:

Deputy prime minister and member of the Revolutionary Command Council. Accused of shooting disgraced members of the Ba'ath regime. Said to have been informed in advance of the nerve gas attack on Halabja in 1988 which killed 5,000 people.

Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaidi:

Former prime minister and deputy prime minister. Responsible for atrocities against Shia population in southern Iraq. Filmed beating rebels. Oversaw destruction of the southern marshes.

Aziz Salih al-Numan:

Army commander during the 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait. Governor of Nassiriya. Said to have personally overseen summary execution of those who took part in Shia uprising in the city after the first Gulf war.

Abed Hamoud al-Tikriti:

Personal secretary who controlled access to the president. Frequently at Saddam's side. Said to have directed the daily matters of state and to have handed down many of the regime's repressive orders.

Taha Yasin Ramadan:

Vice-president, deputy prime minister. Commanded army during occupation of Kuwait. Had prior knowledge of the Halabja gas attack. Allegedly shot prisoners who were partly buried but still insulting Saddam Hussein.

Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti:

Saddam's half-brother. Former minister of the interior. Witness statements say he beat to death a victim who had driven through a red traffic light.

FRENCH SCEPTICAL AT JUBILANT SCENES

French sceptical at jubilant scenes
By Charles Bremner
The Times of London
April 10, 2003

The fall of Baghdad sparked no jubilation in France yesterday as President Chirac prepared for a hard diplomatic battle to deter Washington from turning Iraq into an outright US protectorate. In keeping with its sceptical tone, the French media depicted the takeover of Baghdad as the victory of overwhelmingly superior forces. Images of rejoicing in the Shia district of Saddam City were balanced with footage of angry Baghdadis "meeting their new masters", as France 2 state television put it. The Americans were again lambasted for heavy-handed methods as the media continued to emphasise the suffering of civilians.

In the first bout of postwar manoeuvring, Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, staged a show of reconciliation yesterday with Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, in Paris. Both stressed the need for the UN to play a leading role in Iraq and for a settlement in the Middle East.

M Chirac flies to St Petersburg tomorrow to forge a common front with President Putin and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, his partners in the pre-war "axis of peace". M Chirac aims to lead a campaign to win as big as possible a role for the UN in post-war Iraq. It must not, he says, become an American vice-royalty with a puppet Government.

He has also ordered his team to mend fences with London and limit the damage done to ties with Washington. However, while the French are optimistic about reconciliation with Tony Blair, they are under no illusion that Washington is about to let them back in from the cold.

“IMAGINE WHAT COULD HAPPEN AFTER THE SADDAMITES FALL AND IRAQ IS BORN AGAIN”

Iraqi discourses: Why the free world was right to rid us of the Saddamite tyranny
A personal view on the liberation of Iraq
By Hussein Damirji
April 2003

I was too young to recall my family's flight from Baghdad and Beirut as the Ba'athists re-seized power in Iraq. My father, who comes from a prominent Shi'i merchant family and is married to a member of a prominent Sunni family, was sentenced to death in absentia as the alleged leader of an attempted coup to overthrow the Iraqi Ba'athist regime. Fortunately, my father was in America at a time when several of his alleged Iraqi capitalist and Jewish co-conspirators were hanged. As a family we were lucky to seek haven and become part of the 400,000 strong Iraqi Diaspora living in the United Kingdom.

I visited Baghdad in 1990 after my father's eventual "pardon" by the Ba'athist regime. My timing was impeccably bad. My March visit coincided with the horrific hanging for espionage of Farhad Bazoft, the Iranian born British journalist, and later with the invasion of Kuwait. I witnessed some of the horrors and tears suffered by my fellow countrymen. I saw the pathetic joy of the educated middle class that there was peace after a decade of war and their pride at seeing Western style burger stands and fried chicken fast food outlets in the new booming modern Saddamite Baghdad. Yet I witnessed friends beating their "friends" allegedly for insulting our esteemed leader or his sons. I will never forget the blood pouring from one man's face as he cried like a child before the roar of the Mukhabarat's black Mercedes screeched to a halt to pick him up – another prisoner taken for questioning based on the fabrications of an Accuser currying favour with the regime.

In 1990, His Excellency Saddam Hussein our brutal dictator dragged Iraq into yet another war. I witnessed the tears of grown men crying at the news of Saddam's latest bloody incursion into a sovereign state, Kuwait.

I recall vividly a friend, who had recently completed his compulsory military service and his anguish on the news of his redraft: "The Bloody bastard. I just left the army. My youth was taken away from me. I was an animal. I forgot what it was like to live like a normal person. I have just learnt how to eat properly, how to speak, how to inter-ract with people again. I am not going back. I will desert the army". This friend was drafted into the army and fortunately survived the Gulf War. He feared more the inevitable consequences of failing to report to duty and the inevitable reprisal killings of his family for such a failure. Every Iraqi can repeat countless and worse tales like these. I swore then that I would never return to my country, until the vicious dictatorship was overthrown.

The last few months have left Iraqis facing a moral quandary. Our country was and is being bombed, and innocent civilians died and continue to die. Can I justify this war in light of the overwhelming number of anti-war articles and the emotional feelings racking most non political Iraqis. Can I justify this war as innocent Iraqi civilians are killed. My friends email, write or call. A dear Arab friend wrote the following to me:

“DEAREST HUSSEIN...

"Dearest Hussein,

Please read the article I mailed by John Pilger. I understand totally your point of view but I feel you need to know exactly what these people will do before change comes about - if they let it happen. Allah istur. [God protect us]

People in Egypt on the street have said to me on several occasions: the Iraqis are the most special Arabs, powerful, clever, gifted etc. etc. and that is why the Americans want to destroy them! They actually believe that years of starving the country of medication, thousands of children dying every year were part of a campaign to destroy a magnificent people for generations to come. This is what outsiders think of your people. It may sound simple or simplistic but sometimes truths are hidden behind such statements. May Allah istur and protect the people of Iraq."

I read John Pilger's article. And Edward Said's. And Robert Fiske's. I re-read my friend's note. They were and are warnings of the dangers that they i.e. the Americans would impose on Iraq, while highlighting the deafening silence emanating from the Arab Worlds' governments and the world's apparent silence on Palestine. There appears to be an overriding fear in the Arab world that the Americans only want war to control the oil and that this is Israel's war by proxy. Why has no one forced the Israelis to follow UN resolutions and withdraw from Palestine? Why do the Israelis have chemical and nuclear weapons? Why does no one enforce UN resolutions against Israel for its continued oppression of the Palestinians? While Saddam is evil and a murderer, so is Sharon and he sees President Bush more often than any other foreign leader. The Americans brought in Saddam, why do they want to remove him now? How can you support a war that could destabilize the whole region?

Despite the shrill cries of these and many Arab authors and academics, the armchair liberators and self licensed voices of the "Arab street", I believe that the opportunity to free Iraq of this tyrannical and vile Saddamite regime was and is in the best interests of our people and those of the Arab world. Discussions of a "pre-emptive" and "hegemonistic oil war" continue to allow many Arabs to hide behind their veils of delusion, in the same way that Saddam attempted to hijack the Palestinian cause as his own. Stop the war was their battlecry. But ask for a solution and they invariably blame the West. Yes, there is hypocrisy in the West and, yes, the United States and its allies blundered badly by not removing Saddam in 1991. And yes, as Pilger quoted one former CIA director as stating about Saddam in the 1980s, "he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." But ask the British people if Britain blundered by allowing Hitler's rise to power and the answer is, undoubtedly, yes.

These writers highlight the plight of millions of Iraqis who have suffered through sanctions. Few recall, as many Iraqis were starving, that the regime's top priority after the Gulf War was the importation of marble. They ignore the complicity of so many of their countryfolk in propping up the Saddamites. Many writers obsess about the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories and forget that, as Iraqis, our immediate concern is the freedom of the Iraqi people. I do not support the barbaric and continued occupation of the Palestinian people. No Iraqi that I know supports Sharon's vile and brutal tactics nor absolves Sharon of the massacres in Sabra and Chatila. Iraqis know only too well the effects of war and the brutality of living in fear. But our immediate concern is Iraq. No Iraqi can allow the Saddamites to continue to hijack our country and allow them to hide behind their veils of antiquated arguments on Imperialism and false claims of defending the Palestinian people's legitimate aspirations to live freely in Palestine.

Many critics of the Bush/Blair policy on Iraq argued that there was a lack of immediacy and basis in international law for removing the Saddamite regime, fingering North Korea as a more immediate threat to the world. However, Saddam's regime was unique among the band of the world's dictatorships. Unlike North Korea's Kim Jung Il, Saddam's regime had gassed its own people and its enemies. A regime that lauded 9/11 and had proven its absolute ruthless use of chemical weaponry on all and sundry and a willingness to use all means at its disposal, hiding its "elite" thugs and weaponry among civilians, strikes me as more dangerous than one which threatens to use its weaponry so that it can blackmail the West into feeding its people. Not even Sharon's most ardent critics can claim that he has gassed his own people although I disagree with writers who try to finesse continued Israeli reluctance to adhere to UN Resolutions based on the nuances of Chapters 6 and 7 of the UN Charter. Saddam is unique in the annals of Middle Eastern history for gassing his own people as well as thousands of Iranians. In addition, Iraq's regime has failed to discharge the onus and burdens of proof required of the Saddamites by Resolution 1441. Kim Jung Il's regime has yet to be declared morally bankrupt by the international community.

OVERTHROWING SADDAM WITHOUT AMERICAN HELP WAS THEIR FANTASY

The arguments against liberation were misplaced. Ask people if they were in favor of regime change and an overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and indeed other Arabs, replied yes. Ask critics of Tony Blair and George Bush's policies what they would suggest, their limp response was not war. Leave Iraq as it is they cried. The people will revolt. Their blind appeasement ignored the impotent reality of the Iraqi people. The everyday struggles of normal Iraqis, people who were and are struggling to provide food and subsistence for their families. Overthrowing Saddam was their fantasy but the vast revenues of Iraq's wealth were pumped into the all-pervasive Big Brother, the infamous Iraqi security apparatus that dominated Iraq and would have made Beria proud. The Iraqis daily fight for survival and their betrayal in 1991 did not allow them the luxury of fomenting revolution. Even now as Coalition forces surround Iraqi cities and have liberated Baghdad, much of the local population is fearful of cheering the Coalition against the Saddamite behemoth. Even the scenes of joy at liberation in Baghdad were tempered by the continued fear of the Regime. People now understand how this regime has inculcated its ideas in the Iraqi psyche and how fearful the population is and has been.

The anti-Liberationists cries that the United States wants to control Iraq's oil wealth also rang hollow. Iraq supplies less than 5 percent of the US's oil needs. Agreements between Russia and the United States as well as other oil producing nations ensure that the United States does not need Iraq's oil. Arguably the United States presence in certain Gulf countries has already ensured that the United States controls the world's major oil fields. However, coupled with Tony Blair's promise to the world that Iraq's oil revenues will be put in trust for the people of Iraq counter those shrill passé cries that the war was one of pure hegemony.

The possibility of regime change was attacked for its sheer cost. If the US wanted to control a percentage of that oil wealth to pay for the removal of the Saddamite regime then Iraqis would welcome it. Iraq was and potentially is one of the richest oil producers in the world with vast tracts of untapped oil fields. Iraq is a country rich in water and agriculture and has a sizable and educated population that should have one of the Arab world's most thriving middle classes bar for Saddam's follies. Years of Saddam's brutal occupation of Iraq have seen the revenues of Iraq's vast natural resources and approximately $320 billion of debt squandered on weapons of destruction, the regime's Stalinistic security services and the endless revolting grandiose monuments and palaces for the greater glory of our former leader. Members of the Iraqi diaspora knew that the Saddam regime preferred marble to feeding its own people.

But it took liberation and media images to convince our neighbors in Islington or Berkeley that we were not exaggerating the gross Saddamite oppulence as the people starved. The regime's henchmen and family members living in the West allegedly hold Iraq's external wealth. The amounts held by these cronies vary but are conservatively estimated at billions of dollars leaving Imelda Marcos looking like a pauper. Regime change will see a greater proportion of Iraqi oil revenues flow down to the Iraqi people. A new Government must track down the untold billions pillaged from Iraq and held by the Saddamite henchmen in the West. Corporations that were complicit in propping up the Saddamites must be investigated and due compensation sought from them.

The Iraqi people have little to show for all of Iraq's oil wealth and the decades of Saddamite misrule. A country that was always at the forefront of Arab political, creative and intellectual thought has seen its people brutalized for decades to such an extent that the tallest order for any new Iraqi government will be the process of de-Ba'athification. The removal of this putrefying philsophy must be one of the first priorities for any new Iraqi transitional Government. Unlike the Iron curtain era of Eastern Europe where much of the population supported the communist ideology, few Iraqis ideologically support the dictatorship. People fail to understand how this regime has inculcated its ideas in the Iraqi psyche and how fearful the population is. The proof of this inculcation is only too evident by the fear of so many Iraqis to rise up against the regime during the war. The removal of the Ba'athist institutions and creation of democratic reform will take time and effort. Re-introducing the democratic norms and the Rule of Law will be a hard task as few Iraqis remember that under a Hashemite Iraq there was indeed a primitive Parliamentary democracy that included Jews, Christians and Muslims.

MEMBERS OF THE SADDAMITE REGIME MUST BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE

A new transitional Iraqi Government must constitutionally implement a bill of rights that enshrines the individual's human rights. Islam is the State religion of Iraq but the rights of all to freely worship and follow their religions must be constitutionally enshrined. Similarly, the rights of the substantial Iraqi minorities and the Kurds must be assured within a Federal system of Government for Iraq. Elections must be held as soon as practicably possible to ensure that all Iraqis are properly represented in their own country. A new era of transparency must be presented in Iraqi governance. Members of a future Iraqi Government must recuse themselves and their families from any conflicts of interest and decisions revolving around business. Members of the Saddamite regime must be brought to justice for their gross violations of human rights but the transitional Government must ensure that there is no bloodbath in Iraq. Perpetrators of gross human rights violations must be tried under an internationally established Human Crimes Tribunal. In the same way that the Nazis were banned from taking Governmental offices, so too all Ba'athists should be banned from any Governmental position of responsibility. When you sup with the Devil, you cannot attend the Angels party. A Truth and Reconciliation Committee must be established to reveal the truth of what happened to victims of the regime's state sponsored crimes. As a member of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Conciliation stated: "A nation's unity depends on a shared identity, which in turn depends largely on a shared memory. The truth also brings a measure of healthy social catharsis and helps to prevent the past from reoccurring.

I believe that a free and democratic Iraq, a country that uses its oil revenues to rebuild its infrastructure, for the benefit of its people and not a tiny oligopoly, can only be a credit to the region. The past months have already seen the effects of possible regime change being felt throughout the Arab world. Countries where ruling families were above any form of criticism are being criticised by members of their own ruling family in their national press. I continue to read articles sent to me by friends from all over the world who criticize the Imperialist US agenda and the lack of even-handedness in US policies in the Middle East as well as the seeming or wilful inability of Arab Governments to speak out on current events. And yet exchanges such as the one below with fellow Iraqis reinforced my belief that the armchair intellectuals were wrong and that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were right to liberate Iraq.

Recently, I met with some Iraqis who had recently left Baghdad and were fortunate to arrive in London. The family is split up as some members are still in Baghdad and they have not heard from these relatives.

"Hussein, you've worked with these Americans. Do you really think that the Americans want to liberate us and get rid of Him?"

"Absolutely. But, let me ask you a question, Do you think that the people will join up with the Americans?"

"If the war is short and they bomb and devastate Saddam and his palaces, and show that they really want to get rid of him, then all the people except the Republican Guards will rise up against him. People are fed up. All they do is build more palaces and monuments to Saddam. The new Saddam Centre for Glory. The new Saddam Centre for Genealogy. The new Saddam Club for Oppression. Do you know that the lunatic Oday is said to have 4,000 cars (including a Rolls Royce with the numberplate 1 New York, Baghdad)?

People are fed up with the handouts to the Palestinians. Do you know how many Iraqi families can be fed on that $25,000 paid to a Palestinian martyr's family? We just want to live normally again in our country. And yes we would all welcome change and that includes the so-called Ba'athists who are taking bribes to allow people out already. Remember that there are very few people who really believe in Ba'athism – it's just a means of survival in that society. Even the Ba'athists know that the regime is crumbling, but we are all afraid. Everyone is fed up with Him."

"Well why aren't the people rising up against this monster in Baghdad?"

"You know what the Mukhabarat and Amn are like. We're all tired and fed up and fighting for our daily survival. You know that I have this sickness but other than curing this, I really pray that they will remove Saddam and his regime. All Iraqis will cheer and rise up for the liberation."

FORMER FRIENDS BERATED ME FOR SUPPORTING THE LIBERATION OF MY COUNTRY

This exchange was with someone who is suffering from the torment of cancer and bravely believes that a free Iraq is in their children, their own and Iraq's best interests. Yet I have received further emails and calls from friends and former friends berating me for supporting the liberation of my country. Another, non-Iraqi, friend (?) wrote:

"Anybody who's been paying the slightest attention to what the americans say and do realizes that the purpose of this war is not to do the iraqis a favor (after all,who are you??? you have zero power in the american domestic political scene. you are badly organized and have turned yourselves into a bunch of informants and collaborators with the CIA) but have their own elaborate agenda of hegemony over iraq and the middle east in general. (This war was waged as far as americans are concerned to serve three constituencies and none of them are the Iraqis: first republican mid western voters freaked by september 11 (rumsfeld), the oil business community big contributers to the republican party (cheney) and the right-wing zionist neo conservatives who are the brains behind this war (Wolfowitz and Perle) working to transform the Islamic world to adapt to Israel's agenda).

In other words, it was very clear from the beginning that the trade-off offered you people was we will rid you of Saddam but you have to accept that we, the Americans, will be your new rulers. Authoritarianism we will help you dispose of, but take the empire in its place. To say that no one wants Iraq occupied but to go on supporting this war because it will rid of you Saddam is a an instance of the will to ignore, the will to listen to half-sentences and to understand half-truths. Self-serving, isn't it? This leaves you in a nasty position which to me is indefensible morally and politically. You end up collaborating with the devil who you choose to see an angel... for the time being!

The irony of all this to me, is that the Iraqis who actually stayed in Iraq and truly suffered the brunt of Saddam's ungodly tyranny, proved to be more nationalistic and opposed to these so-called rescuers coming from the other side of the Atlantic ocean than you people who have left and live an affluent diasporic existence."

Another friend wants me to attend a rally against the "American occupation of Iraq" on Saturday in London. I will not attend such a rally and I will not publish my response to the other friend but I realize that while the battle for Baghdad has been won, the war is still not a victory. Every Iraqi that I know has relatives in Iraq. Members of the Iraqi diaspora are not all affluent, indeed, far from it. Every Iraqi is torn by the fear of continued loss of innocent Iraqi lives and the ultimate goal of a truly liberated and democratic Iraq. We fear now the dangers of starvation and continued deprivation that can turn Iraq into a complete state of anarchy. However, imagine what could happen after the Saddamites fall and Iraq is born again. Allah Y'istur.

FULL ARTICLES

SYRIA NOW TOP U.S. TARGET FOR “REGIME CHANGE”

Syria now top US target for 'regime change'
By Toby Harnden
The Daily Telegraph
April 8, 2003

One of the main subjects on the agenda of the Belfast summit yesterday was Syria, the Pentagon's next likely target for "regime change" amid suspicions it allowed Saddam Hussein to transfer weapons of mass destruction within its borders.

Although President George W Bush did not include Syria in his "axis of evil" of Iran, Iraq and North Korea in January 2001, since then American officials say they have seen growing evidence of support for terrorism by Damascus.

American officials stress, however, that regime change can be achieved without military action. There are strong hopes in Washington for a popular revolution in Iran by democratic opposition groups inspired by what has happened in Iraq.

President Bashar Assad, Syria's leader, has led Arab opposition to the Iraq war, stating that he hoped Saddam would remain in power. Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, recently accused Syria of providing military equipment to Saddam.

Some US officials are also convinced that Mr Assad has actively collaborated with Saddam and agreed to take weapons, including Scud missiles, from him so they would not be discovered in Iraq by United Nations inspectors.

"Significant equipment, assets and perhaps even expertise was transferred, the first signs of which appeared in August or September 2002," a Bush administration official told The Telegraph.

"It is quite possible that Iraqi nuclear scientists went to Syria and that Saddam's regime may retain part of its army there."

Increasingly tough rhetoric from the Bush administration had made little fundamental difference to the Syrians, he added.

"They behave only slightly when they're scared to death but the change is only limited and tactical." Satellite photographs revealed heavily guarded convoys moving from Iraq to Syria last year.

The official said: "Put it this way, they wouldn't have needed that kind of security to move cattle."

The official said that there were also well-founded fears that Iraq and Libya had also been co-operating and that weapons proliferation in the Middle East was one of the major problems facing the world. Colonel Gaddafi's regime was "scary close" to developing a nuclear weapon, he said.

In December, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, said: "We are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria."

This claim was subsequently investigated by John Bolton, US under-secretary of state for arms control and a prominent hawk in the Bush administration. Israeli sources said Mr Bolton told Mr Sharon that war with Iraq would force Syria and Libya to "come off the fence".

When asked by The Telegraph last week whether Saddam had exported some of his weapons to Syria, Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary said: "We just don't know."

There is firm resistance within the US State Department to Mr Rumsfeld's hardline stance on Syria with many officials arguing, like their British counterparts, that Syria can be a partner in the war against terrorism if it is given encouragement rather than being threatened.

Richard Murphy, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 1983 to 1989, said he did not believe armed conflict with Syria was on the immediate horizon.

"Talk of a broader military conflict with Syria does not represent a decision taken by American policy makers. This is the view among the neo-conservatives, some of whom are in the administration.

"There's a perception that the time has come to spread democracy in the Middle East. Their view is that the US paid heavily on September 11 for having not stood by its principles in dealing with autocracies in the Middle East."

But neo-conservatives, former Democrats with socially liberal views but a hawkish and ambitious vision of the use of American power abroad, include Mr Wolfowitz and Mr Bolton and enjoy growing influence within the White House.

SYRIA AND IRAN MUST GET THEIR TURN

Syria and Iran must get their turn
By Michael Ledeen
The National Post
April 7, 2003

A year ago, as I was finishing the first draft of The War Against the Terror Masters, I wrote that Syria and Iran could not tolerate an American success in Iraq, because it would fatally undermine the authority of the tyrants in Damascus and Tehran. Since the United States has taken too long to move on from Afghanistan to challenge the regimes of the terror masters, they had forged an alliance and would co-operate in sending terror squads against coalition armed forces, with the intention of repeating the Lebanese scenarios in the mid-Eighties (against the United States) and the late Nineties (against Israel).

U.S. diplomats didn't believe a word of it. After all, as Richard Armitage, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, said just a few weeks ago, "Iran is a democracy," and thus is qualitatively different from Iraq and North Korea. The State Department has been pursuing some sort of deal with the Iranian regime since the start of the Bush administration, and didn't want to be bothered -- either with the facts, or with those annoying presidential statements that branded Iran a terror state governed by self-appointed religious fanatics. As for Syria, Foggy Bottom has long considered the Assads potential allies (remember how Warren Christopher waited patiently on the runway in Damascus during one of his "peace process" jaunts, only to be dissed? Remember how Henry Kissinger once called Hafez Assad "the most fascinating leader in the Middle East"?) and until a few days ago was working on a strategic partnership.

But war has a way of destroying the self-serving ambiguities of the diplomatic crowd, and in recent days Americans have heard some pretty tough words from both the U.S. Secretary of State and the U.S. Secretary of Defence, warning Syria and Iran to stop their lethal support of Saddam Hussein's crumbling regime, lest the United States treat them as hostile countries.

Just as I have been saying for these many frustrating months, the United States would find itself in a regional conflict, whatever it wanted, and whatever fanciful ideas the likes of Armitage and policy-planning chief Richard Haass conjured up for their personal satisfaction.

Now, Eli Lake of United Press International reports the government is aware of Iranian terrorist operations inside Iraq, and there have been many stories reporting Syria's campaign to send terrorists across the border to attack U.S. forces. In truth, Americans didn't need intelligence to know this was going on, because the Iranian and Syrian tyrants had announced it publicly. Assad gave an interview recently in which he proclaimed – in words that could have been taken right out of my book – that Lebanon was the model for the struggle that had to be waged in Iraq against coalition forces. And Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, gave a speech a few weeks ago in which he said the presence of American troops in Iraq would be even worse for Iran than the hated regime of Saddam Hussein.

So they are coming to kill coalition forces, which means that there is no more time for diplomatic "solutions." The United States will have to deal with the terror masters, here and now. Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle. One may legitimately ask if the Iraqi people are fully prepared for the burdens of democracy after the mind-numbing years of Saddam (I think they are, mind you, but the question is fair), but there is no doubt that the Iranians are up to it. And Syria cannot stand alone against a successful democratic revolution that topples tyrannical regimes in Kabul, Tehran and Iraq.

This is the path – the correct path – that President George W. Bush has charted, despite the opposition of so many of his diplomats, and despite the near-total indifference of the Western press to the plight of the Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian people. It is the path that most fully expresses the American revolutionary tradition, and gives the peoples of the Middle East the chance to recapture their dignity by empowering them to govern their own lands. Finally, for those obsessed by the Arab-Israeli question, it is the best chance for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. President Bush has said that he will not support a Palestinian state that is governed by people hostile to democracy. Yet it is impossible for a democratic Palestine to emerge, let alone survive, so long as the dominant countries in the region are tyrannical supporters of terrorism.

If, at long last, the United States is going to transform the Middle East in the name of the democratic revolution, it is madness to entrust this task to a Department of State that does not believe in it. The State Department, and the CIA, does not believe that democracy can succeed in the Middle East. That is why they have long supported a coup in Baghdad, rather than regime change. That is why they have violently opposed the Iraqi National Congress, which has fought for democracy for more than a decade, only to be repeatedly betrayed and sabotaged by the U.S. government.

Yet the U.S. Congress, seemingly unaware of the urgency of the moment and the years of blunders that contributed so much to the current crisis, has now voted to put all the money earmarked for the "reconstruction" of Iraq – which is to say, the creation of the post-war Iraqi polity and society – entirely in the hands of the Department of State.

If this is permitted to stand, it will make the creation of Iraqi democracy even more difficult than circumstances demand. The White House has said that it opposes this centralization of authority in the hands of the State Department, and it is likely that President Bush will veto the proposal, as he should. But, like U.S. diplomats, American elected representatives need a crash course in democratic revolution, the better to advance their cause, defeat their enemies and save the lives of the incredible fighting men and women.

The United States has written an exceptional page of military history in Iraq, but it can be undone by suicidal political blunders in the region in the very near future. It's time to bring down the other terror masters.

Faster, please.

(Michael Ledeen is the resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.)

BASHAR’S GAME: WHAT IS SYRIA UP TO?

Bashar's game: What is Syria up to?
By Eyal Zisser
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
April 7, 2003

Even those who long ago abandoned any expectations of a fundamental transformation in Syrian policy under Bashar al-Assad have nevertheless been surprised by Assad's approach to the war in Iraq. For many, this posture seems to invite a direct confrontation with the United States of the sort that his father, Hafez al-Assad, would never have risked. Indeed, Bashar has consciously chosen to come out against the Anglo-American war on Iraq and even sought to lead the Arab camp opposed to the United States.

In an interview in the Lebanese daily al-Safir a few days after the beginning of the war, Bashar insisted that the war is part of larger and more sinister American plan to redraw the map of the Middle East in the service of Israeli interests. He added that Syria was liable to be the next American target in the region but that it would not stand idly by. He also stressed that as long as Israel exists, it constitutes a threat to Syria and to all the Arabs. It is therefore not surprising that Syrian media have recently become a platform for vicious anti- American propaganda, unrestrained attacks on America's "evil and Satanic offensive," and adulation for "the brave and admirable resistance" of the Iraqi people.

The "Syrian street" has added its voice with a series of huge demonstrations in support of Iraq and against the American campaign. Nevertheless, none of this is nearly as significant as the matter of Bashar's willingness to assist the Iraqi war effort, which emerged with great fanfare several days after the outbreak of hostilities. That happened when senior American officials, especially Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, accused Damascus of aiding Iraq in a way that could endanger American forces.

According to Rumsfeld, the Syrians transferred or allowed the use of their territory to transfer military equipment, including night vision goggles, to Iraq. According to reports from Israel, Syrian had also permitted the Iraqis to conceal military equipment in Syria, including even proscribed materials such as unconventional weapons or surface-to-surface missiles. The Syrians, of course, quickly denied such charges, dismissing them as Zionist propaganda aimed at driving a wedge between Syria and the United States or, alternatively, as an American attempt to prepare the ground for a possible American assault on Syria.

All this raises some obvious questions about Bashar's behavior. Is he aware of the possible consequences of his actions and is he not concerned that his policies might put Syria on a collision course with the United States? Does he not have a true gasp of the situation because of unreliable information or faulty judgment? And, finally, is he really in charge?

While there are no unequivocal answers to these questions, it is worth recalling that there is nothing new in Bashar's behavior. Ever since he took power following his father's death, Syrian policy with respect to Iraq has constantly edged close to the threshold of American tolerance, though without ever actually crossing it.

For many months, Syria has pushed for warmer relations with Iraq and aligned itself with Iraq in the latter's political struggle with Washington. In return, Syria has received 150,000-200,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day, in clear contravention of the sanctions on Iraq. Finally, there are persistent reports that Syria has ignored the use of its territory to smuggle weapons into Iraq.

Syria's current posture is therefore fully consistent with its pre-war policies, and any change in the rules of the game has come from the American side. After all, for several months before the start of the war, Washington had turned a blind eye to Bashar's actions or, at worst, lodged some mild verbal protests. Only after the fighting began did it choose to rebuke Bashar for acting in ways that had previously been overlooked. Still, it is worthwhile trying to assess Bashar's motives in adopting such a blatantly provocative posture. In the first place, there is no doubt that Bashar is acting under pressure. He senses that Syria could become a target of future American wrath once the war in Iraq is over. Moreover, he is acting out of anti-American instinct unmitigated by calculations of strategic interest that might argue in favor of a more cautious approach.

Secondly, Bashar is determined to strengthen his standing in the Syrian street and, by extension, the Arab street, and he is therefore prepared to adopt a populist stance rather than act contrary to prevailing moods. That may well suggest a lack of political maturity, selfconfidence and experience in a leader who has not yet reached forty years of age. That raises questions about where all this might lead. There are many indications that Washington and Damascus may be on a collision course. However, it is possible that Secretary Rumsfeld does not represent the dominant trend in the Administration but only the hawkish school of thought that believes that Syria ought to be a future target of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, has been far less aggressive in referring to Syria. Indeed, he insists that Damascus can choose which path it wants to pursue, i.e., that all the options are still open.

In the past, Washington adopted an accommodating approach to Damascus precisely because the Syrians themselves refrained from crossing any "red lines." Every time their actions seemed about to provoke some American reaction, they pulled back. In Bashar's own view, he has not yet crossed such a line but has only persisted, since the outbreak of war, in doing what he had been doing for many months before. It is therefore likely that, having provoked a signal of serious American concern, he will now display more caution. That, in any event, is what his father would have done.

It is American indulgence that encouraged a show of Syrian defiance. That defiance may well pay off for Bashar if it enhances his popular standing in Syria and elsewhere while preserving the possibility of a future reconciliation with Washington if the peace process in the region is resumed after the war. But for that possibility to materialize, George W. Bush, Jr., must also follow in his father's footsteps. If he does not, Bashar may pay a heavy price.

U.S. SPOTS MISSILE LAUNCHER IN WESTERN IRAQ

Iraq and Syria – full partners
U.S spots missile launcher in western Iraq
Middle East Newsline
April 4, 2003

The United States has spotted what appeared to be an Iraqi missile launcher near the Syrian border.

U.S. intelligence sources said a Scud-class transporter erector launcher was seen in western Iraq near the Syrian border last week. The sources said the launcher was driven by truck from Syria, operated its radar system overnight and returned to Syria.

"We are not sure what kind of launcher it was, but it appeared to be that for the Al Husseini medium-range missile," an intelligence source said. "The launcher came from and returned to Syria."

The Al Husseini has a range of 650 kilometers and was launched against Israel in the 1991 Gulf war. Iraq is said to have between 20 and 80 medium-range missiles in its arsenal.

The sources said U.S. reconnaissance aircraft did not try to destroy the suspected Scud launcher. They said the Bush administration has relayed its concern to Damascus.

U.S. officials said Syria has so far ignored warnings from the Bush administration to halt weapons supplies to the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Damascus of supplying Iraq with night-vision goggles and other advanced systems produced by Russia and other former East Bloc states.

"We have seen that Syria is continuing to conduct itself the way it was prior to the time I said what I said," Rumsfeld said on Thursday.

U.S. military officials said British and U.S. special operations forces have been operating in western Iraq. They said they have not found any traces of missiles or weapons of mass destruction.

"They [coalition forces] have been cutting some lines of communication," Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. "They've been raiding some facilities. They've been going to some suspected weapon of mass destruction locations. We've had a series of direct- action raids as well as interdiction."

McChrystal said coalition forces struck Iraqi command forces and headquarters in western Iraq. This included strikes on Iraqi units in Rutba, near the Jordanian border, and the capture of an Iraqi air base in the H-2 region.

Syria could also be the destination of Saddam and his family, who are said to be fleeing Iraq. The London-based Iraqi National Congress reports that a convoy of 60 vehicles have left the northern city of Mosul for Syria. The group said the convoy is rumored to contain members of Saddam's family.

On Friday, the London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat daily reported that Saddam's wife, Sajadeh, escaped Iraq and has found refuge in the Iraqi embassy in Damascus. The newspaper, quoting U.S. sources, said Sajadeh had sought to receive asylum on the eve of the war from an Arab League member, but her request was denied.

SYRIA GIVES PASSPORTS TO SUICIDE BOMBERS

Syria gives passports to suicide bombers
By Michael Binyon
The Times (of London)
April 2, 2003

The SAS has arrested four busloads of suspected suicide bombers and would-be fighters in Iraq's western desert.

The men, who are being held as prisoners of war, came from various Arab countries but all carried Syrian passports. They are thought to be among thousands of Arab zealots making their way to the battle front.

Syria has issued about 2,000 passports to people volunteering to fight for President Saddam Hussein in recent weeks, raising serious concerns in Britain and America, which suspects Damascus of smuggling war supplies to Iraq. The coalition is to protest to the Syrians.

Syrian officials have made no secret of their sympathy for the resistance of "the Iraqi people" to coalition attacks, although they have not voiced public support for Saddam.

Damascus has rejected accusations by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, that Syria has provided Iraq with night-vision goggles.

The big worry is that many of the volunteers receiving passports may be suicide bombers, including Palestinians hoping to avenge themselves for US support of Israel. Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, said last week that up to 4,000 suicide bombers were ready.

British sources believe that up to 600 volunteers have crossed from Syria into Iraq or are about to do so. Sending fighters to join a combatant army is a clear breach of neutrality. "The Syrians are playing with fire," one source said yesterday.

In Jerusalem, Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defence Minister, said that Israel viewed as "very grave" Syria's role in helping the volunteers. He also issued a veiled warning to President Assad over comments in a Lebanese newspaper that Syria could be the next target in America's War on Terror "as long as Israel exists". Mr Mofaz said that Mr Assad had effectively ruled out a peace agreement with Israel.

FULL ARTICLES

BUSH, BLAIR EXCOMMUNICATED: CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY

Bush, Blair excommunicated: Church of the Nativity
By Yasser El-Banna
Islam Online
April 1, 2003

(Photo caption: The warmongers are barred from ever entering Christians' most sacred place)

Spokesman of the Orthodox Church in the Holy Lands, archimandrite Attallah Hanna declared that U.S. President George Bush, his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, British Premier Tony Blair, his Foreign Minister Jack Straw have all been deprived from visiting the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.

This decision was taken to express the refusal of the Palestinian Christians of the U.S.-led invasion on Iraq.

In a special interview with IslamOnline.net, Monday, March 31, Hanna described both Bush and Blair as excommunicates, as they have turned a deaf ear to several calls by the Orthodox Church and other churches before war erupted.

"This indicates that leaders of the invading states did not listen to the church, and hence, we deem them excommunicates and perverted."

"Bush and Blair behave in an antagonistically to the Semitic Church that calls for stopping the aggression and hostilities against Iraq," he added.

The Church of Nativity decided on Sunday, March 30, 2003, to excommunicate Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair and Straw due to their military attacks on Iraq.

The decision was declared Sunday by Father Banar Teyous, representative of the Orthodox Nativity Church during a march, organized by Orthodox institutions in front of the Church, to criticize the U.S. British invasion of Iraq.

Father Banar Teyous said that U.S.-British invaders are war criminals and children assassins and hence, the Church decided to excommunicate them.

THE WAR HAS NO RELIGIOUS COVER

The attacks undertaken by the alliance in Iraq is contrary to the instructions and message of Christianity, Father Attalah said.

"Such a war targets both Muslims and Christians and is in favor of the world Zionism that seeks to promote the notion of religious and civilizational struggle," he added.

"We condemn the aggression and call for an immediate stop thereof, as what is happening in Baghdad, capital of civilization, is extremely painful."

He expressed the sympathy of the Christian church with the Iraqi people, underlining that there is no moral or religious cover for the deeds of invaders in Iraq.

Hanna said that the excommunication decision is only a means to express disapproval and strong condemnation of what is currently going on in Iraq. It is also an expression of the Church's sympathy with the Iraqi people.

The Church also declared its desire to put an immediate end to the war on Iraq, he said.

GLOBAL CHRISTIAN CAMPAIGN

Hanna unveiled the efforts and contacts made by the Oriental Orthodox Church with several Christian churches the world over to organize a global Christian campaign in coordination with the Islamic institutions in order to stop the aggression that targets the Arab nation, the civilization and human values stipulated under the heavenly scriptures.

Archimandrite Hanna called upon the whole world, Christians and Muslims, to cooperate in order to defuse the Zionist and imperialist plans.

He said that there must be an Arab, Islamic and Christian cooperation with the objective of boosting historical links among followers of both doctrines in order to strengthen the values of dialogue and unity in the Arab world.

It is worth noting that the Church of Nativity is the first church on earth and has a special importance for different Christian sects, as it was established where Jesus Christ was born.

The Church consists of a huge religious compound that includes the church building as well as a number of monasteries and other churches that represent different Christian sects.

The Church is managed by three sects, namely, Orthodox, Earth and Franciscans.

PALESTINIAN BAN FOR LEADERS OF UK AND AMERICA

Palestinian ban for leaders of UK and America
By Eric Silver
The Independent (U.K.)
April 7, 2003

The Mufti of Jerusalem, the Palestinians' most senior Muslim cleric, has issued a fatwa barring George Bush and Tony Blair from visiting the "sacred holy land of Palestine".

Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, who is appointed and paid by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, said Muslims were obliged to rise in the face of the Anglo-American "aggression". All Muslims, he insisted, were forbidden to assist the war effort.

He took care not to brand President Bush and the Prime Minister as "enemies of Islam" – which is tantamount to a death sentence – or to call for a jihad (holy war) against the US and Britain. But Arab journalists suggested that was how many devout Muslims would interpret the fatwa.

Sheikh Sabri's fatwa was issued a week after the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Bethlehem announced that the Allied leaders, both practising Christians, would never be allowed to enter the Church of the Nativity. The Greek Orthodox Church, the largest denomination among Palestinian Christians, controls most of the 6th-century basilica, built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian over the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

Bishop Panaritos told his congregation that the American and British leaders were "murderers" and therefore could not enter the house of God. Their place was in a prison, not a church, he said.

The two decrees reflect boiling hostility in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the war.

Muslims streamed out of the mosques after Friday prayers last week chanting: "Death to America! Death to Britain!" and "With blood and soul, we shall redeem Iraq". In Nablus, masked gunmen set fire to cut-out figures of Bush and Blair as well as a huge wooden effigy of an American F-18 warplane.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the militant Islamic group Hamas, urged the Iraqi people to emulate his own "martyrs" and launch suicide attacks against the Allied troops. "Oh, Iraq," his followers responded, "we are coming. We are ready to sacrifice millions."

Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas political leader, added: "If the crusaders insist on storming Baghdad, they will lose thousands of soldiers. Baghdad is a graveyard for invaders, whose destiny will be hell."

The mufti's fatwa was endorsed by the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that London and Washington are advocating a Palestinian state and are preparing to publish a "road-map" that is designed to deliver independence by the end of 2005.

The Palestinian Authority hosted the mufti's Ramallah press conference. A cabinet minister sat beside him. Palestinian newspapers carried the story on their front pages yesterday.

PALESTINIANS CLERICS’ FATWA ON MUSLIMS AIDING IRAQ WAR

Palestinian clerics' fatwa on Muslims aiding Iraq war
Reuters
April 5, 2003

The top Palestinian religious authority on Saturday banned Muslims from aiding the U.S.-led war in Iraq. "All Muslim scholars in Palestine declare a fatwa (edict) forbidding any Muslim to participate in that aggressive war, or even to lend the voracious invaders a hand," said the Al-Fatwa Supreme Council, an assembly of clerics from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Grand Mufti Ikrima Sabri, head of the Supreme Council, told Reuters: "We see that the continuous aggression against Iraq aims at stealing the oil of Iraq and not liberating the people of Iraq."

Palestinians are generally sympathetic to Iraq, seeing the 17-day-old war as parallel with their fight against Israel.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has bankrolled the families of suicide bombers and other Palestinian militants killed in a 30-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.

The Palestinian Authority wants a negotiated solution to the Iraqi crisis. But Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who was shunned after publicly endorsing Saddam during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, has avoided such action this time.

MUFTI BANS BUSH, BLAIR FROM HOLY LAND

Mufti bans Bush, Blair from Holy Land
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Jerusalem Post
April 5, 2003

The Palestinian Authority's mufti, Sheikh Ikremah Sabri, issued a fatwa or religious decree Saturday banning US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair from setting foot on "the sacred, holy land of Palestine."

This is the first time the mufti, who was appointed by Yasser Arafat, has issued such a ruling. The fatwa was announced at a press conference organized by the Palestine Media Center in al-Bireh.

Palestinians said the decree is an indication of growing anti-American and anti-British sentiment in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It comes at a time when tens of thousands of Palestinians continue to stage protests denouncing the US and Britain and burning effigies of Bush and Blair.

The unprecedented religious decree comes only days after Christian leaders in Bethlehem announced that the two leaders would never be allowed to visit the Church of the Nativity.

In his decree, Sabri urged Muslims to confront the US-British "aggression" on Iraq. But he stopped short of calling for a jihad against London and Washington.

Other preachers used Friday prayers to urge Muslims to wage a holy war on the US and Britain.

"Muslims are obliged to rise in the face of this aggression," said the fatwa, which was read by the mufti. "This war is aimed at taking control over the Iraqi people and their oil resources and reshaping the Arab region to serve America's interests."

The mufti, who is the highest religious authority in the Palestinian Authority, ridiculed Bush and Blair for declaring that the purpose of the war is to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's regime.

"The ongoing aggression is aimed at stealing Iraq from its people and not liberating the people," he argued.

"Who appointed the Americans as guardians on Iraq to liberate its people?" he asked, adding that his decree also prohibits Muslims from providing any kind of assistance to the US and Britain in their war.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip demonstrated over the weekend in support of Saddam Hussein and against the US and Britain. Chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Britain," thousands of protesters took to the streets in several towns and villages after Friday noon prayers.

In Gaza City, thousands of worshipers streamed out of the Omari Mosque in one of the biggest shows of support for the Iraqi leader.

The Palestinians, chanting, "With blood, with soul, we redeem Iraq," marched towards the monument for the unknown soldier in the center of Gaza City, where a tent had been set up to express solidarity with Saddam.

Carrying two coffins one with the words UN Security Council on it and the other with Arab League the crowd chanted "Bush listen very well, the Islamic fighters will send you to hell." Top Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders who led the rally saluted the Iraqi army for its fierce resistance against the American and British soldiers.

Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, reiterated his call to the Iraqi people to follow Hamas and launch suicide attacks against the American and British troops. The demonstrators replied by chanting, "Oh Iraq, we are coming, and we are prepared to sacrifice millions."

Hamas representative Mahmoud Zahhar told the crowd that "it was inevitable for the American and British invaders to arrive at the gates of Baghdad because that's where they are going to be buried."

"If the crusaders insist on storming Baghdad, they will lose thousands of soldiers. Baghdad is a graveyard for invaders, whose destiny will be hell," he added.

In Ramallah, Palestinian officials joined thousands of Palestinians who took to the streets following Friday prayers to protest against the war in Iraq. Waving Palestinian and Iraqi flags, the protesters shouted slogans denouncing Bush and Blair, as well as pro-Western Arab presidents and monarchs.

The PA mufti in Ramallah, Jamal Bawatneh, called in his Friday sermon for a jihad against the US and Britain. He told thousands of worshipers at the Jamal Abdel Nasser Mosque in al-Bireh that it was the duty of all Muslims to participate in a holy war against "the Americans and British infidels who are perpetrating massacres against Iraqi children and women on a daily basis."

In Nablus, masked gunmen belonging to the Hamas military wing spearheaded a large crowd of demonstrators carrying Iraqi flags and photographs of Saddam. Spokesmen at the rally emphasized the "special bond between Iraqi and Palestinian blood."

Thousands cheered as the masked gunmen set fire to a huge wooden emblem of an American F-18 warplane and effigies of Bush and Blair.

FULL ARTICLES

“THERE ARE MANY JOURNALISTS WHO’VE NEVER MET AN ISRAELI IN THEIR LIVES”

In poisoned English
By Ori Golan
The Jerusalem Post magazine
March 27, 2003

The past thirty months' Palestinian-Israeli violence has created fertile ground for anti-Semitism in Britain, and for criticism of Israel's' response to it

On January 27 this year, on Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day, the London-based Independent published a cartoon of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon biting off the head of a Palestinian child as helicopter warships bombard villages and call out "Vote Sharon!" The drawing deeply offended the Jewish community, not least because of its anti-Semitic undertones.

In response to the high volume of complaints from readers, the newspaper published full-page responses from two prominent Jewish public figures: MP Gerald Kaufman and Ned Temko, editor of the Jewish Chronicle. Kaufman insisted that the cartoon was little more than satire and that it was time to tell the Israeli government to "buzz off"; Temko described the cartoon as not only shocking – but appalling. Finally, the cartoonist himself, Dave Brown, had his say. It was all allegory, he explained, inspired by Goya's painting, Saturn.

Shuli Davidovich, the Israeli press attach in London, who responds to anti-Israel bias in the British media and fights tirelessly in Israel's corner, lodged a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission which has written to the newspaper asking for its response.

Israel's position in Britain has suffered a serious blow since the start of the intifada. Twisted, biased and misleading reports have created a hostile environment and given rise to fierce criticism of Israel. So why has Israel's image in the British press taken such a battering?

"Firstly, there's the issue of morality", says Davidovich. "Israel will only publish photos of terror attack victims after receiving permission from the victim's family and the go-ahead from the photographer... Even though other media outlets publish these horrific scenes without compunction, we will refuse to do so, as a matter of respect to the families.

"On the other hand, Palestinians often invite camera crews to film 'their massacres' and what you get is an unbalanced, distorted picture.

"In terms of substance, Israel is not made up of one official body," Davidovich says. "There is the Prime Minister's Office, the Government Press Office, the police, the Foreign Ministry, and the IDF. This multiplicity of spokesmen can slow down the process before an official statement can be made. Before we can comment on any specific issue or incident, it has to be verified and checked by a chain of command. Unfortunately sometimes, by the time we go through all the channels, the story has done the rounds in the press and we lose the momentum."

In the absence of an Israeli response, Palestinian commentaries fill the airwaves and the newspapers.

One glaring example was the IDF's incursion into Jenin last April. Initially Saeb Erekat, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, spoke of 3,000 Palestinian dead, then of 500. Meanwhile Palestinian "eyewitnesses" described it as a "massacre of epic proportions." The British media relayed these unverified figures and soon tales of mass murders, cover-ups, common graves, and war crimes began filling the front pages of the newspapers and dominating television and radio airtime.

"We are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide," wrote columnist A.N. Wilson, in the Evening Standard, London's main newspaper. By the time a more accurate picture emerged, and it was evident that no massacre had taken place in Jenin, the damage had been done. In the British psyche, Israel had killed, maimed, pillaged and destroyed.

A newspaper reporter who was based in Israel (and asks to remain unnamed) describes the Israeli PR machine as "abysmal."

"More money is spent on promoting Bamba than on promoting Israel's image. The IDF Spokesman's Office personnel are young girls who are unable to cope with the work and unable to supply the goods. Basically, Israel is disabled by the fact that there are no good people responding to what people want in real time. "As a reporter in Israel you learn quickly that a lot of it is about fiefdoms, you can run around all day before you get a comment from an Israeli source. The Palestinians know their stuff. They'd spin us one line and they'd give it immediately."

Some of these sentiments were echoed last October in state comptroller, retired Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Goldberg's report, in which he severely criticized the Foreign Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces for the absence of coordination between them and their inability to explain Israel's side in the conflict with the Palestinians.

Director of the Israel Government Press Office Daniel Seaman, fails to understand what all the fuss is about. In an interview with French writer Yona Dureau he says: "The term: 'hasbara' comes from 'lehasbir'- to explain. Israel has nothing to explain. Why does Israel have to explain itself? Do other countries have to constantly justify themselves?... There is nothing to explain and if other countries don't understand, too bad for them. Israel has nothing to explain."

Winston Pickett, head of external relations for the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) sounds a shrill warning.

"Israel needs to understand that hasbara is not a luxury – or an afterthought. It is a strategic necessity. There is a constant need for hasbara to get the message out in good times as well as bad. It also must not be episodic or crisis-oriented. You cannot expect the media to cover 'your side' of the story when you haven't bothered to cultivate it."

Veteran radio commentator Michael Freedland claims that Israel's image problem is not new, but an issue which has long been overlooked by successive Israeli governments.

"In 1973, shortly after the Yom Kippur war, then-prime minister Golda Meir came to Britain. I was running a Jewish radio program at the time called You don't have to be Jewish, which boasted an audience of 150,000 listeners. I asked her for an interview while she was here. 'Darling,' she said to me, 'I don't have time.' She then spent 10 minutes telling me she didn't have five minutes for an interview.

"The Arabs would appear on British TV and have someone articulate and bright and the Israelis would find a Knesset member who hardly spoke English. There is no doubt that Israel doesn't consider anything outside the US as very important."

Yoav Biran, former ambassador to Britain and director-general of the Foreign Ministry, rebuts these claims.

"I concede that there is a problem with quantity, but not quality. We take the whole issue of 'hasbara' very seriously and have some excellent, eloquent English speakers who are able to put Israel's stand across. It is a sad fact that much of the reporting about Israel lacks context and there are more and more bastions of unfair and unprofessional reporting."

But if the government is taking hasbara seriously, then it is unclear why it is not investing in it. The current budget allocated for this purpose stands at NIS 40 million. This covers all Israeli embassies around the world, including the salaries of paid staff specifically employed in promoting Israel's image. And with this paltry budget about to be cut further, the situation does not look likely to improve.

Despite the pecuniary constraints, Davidovich says that the embassy is making inroads.

"We meet as many journalists, presenters and editors as possible. We put them in touch with officials in Israel, academics and individuals who are affected by the situation. We also offer them ideas and facilitate meetings for them. It's important for us that they get to know us. Whenever there's a debate or interview on television or the radio, we try and get Israel's version also represented. If there is no Israeli side, we will lodge a complaint. Sometimes it works – sometimes it doesn't; it's Sisyphean work."

The British Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM) was set up by members of Britain's Jewish community in the wake of the second intifada. Its aim is to bring speakers who can explain Israel's position, as well as to effect a shift in opinion of Israel among the general public and opinion-formers. So urgent do they perceive the situation, that they have enlisted the help of two senior American political strategists, Stanley Greenberg and Frank Lunz to counter the general anti-Israel atmosphere that pervades the media circles.

But should Israeli policy be undertaken and underwritten by non-Israelis?

Says Biran: "The fact that there are organizations in a number of countries whose aim is to promote Israel's stand in the media, is an expression of concern for Israel, alongside the financial constraints on Israel. I view it as a very positive thing. I wish we could say 'don't worry about us,' but we can't and their help is greatly appreciated."

Professor Barry Kosmin, executive director of JPR takes a different view.

"I think it is more than a little embarrassing – and in a public relations sense perhaps, ill-advised – to have Israel's only effective strategic communication coming out of a British Jewish communal organization. If I were an Israeli taxpayer I would be incensed that my government has never put sufficient resources, time, or sophistication into this crucial area.

"Israel is one of the few states in modern times that has been engaged in a war without establishing a centralized ministry of information or propaganda. Instead, it has relied on incoherent messages from various ministries controlled by different – and often rival – political parties. Not being 'on message' is bad. Not having a message at all is patently dangerous. Having numerous and contradictory messages only guarantees a public relations disaster."

BICOM recently carried out research on anti-Israel attitudes in Britain. Its report highlights that much of Israel's negative image in the British media is attributed to presentation. It is not getting its message across. Blunt and unequivocal language, concludes the report, particularly with an Israeli accent, is much too confrontational for British audiences.

"Some of the negative images of Israelis," says a foreign editor of one of the broadsheets, "must be attributed to mentality: when you meet Israelis often they come across as plain rude: they shoot from the hip. They see themselves as being 'dugri' but are perceived as being rude. The Palestinians are more refined; there's a whole protocol they follow. I think it's important to bear these things in mind because it causes antagonism."

Still, accent, age or arrogance cannot fully account for Israel's negative image. At issue is coverage lacking in truth, fairness and context. Many of the Israel-based correspondents are journalists with a minimal knowledge of the area, its history or geography.

Davidovich agrees: "There are many journalists who've never met an Israeli in their lives. Some have no idea how big – or even where – Israel is. I was once asked by an editor of a magazine about the number of Israeli soldiers manning the Suez Canal. He was surprised to hear that the Suez Canal is no longer part of Israel."

Tom Gross worked in Israel for six years as a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph and other papers. Many journalists, he says, follow a pack mentality, picking up similar views to their colleagues.

"Many don't speak Hebrew and don't have close Israeli acquaintances. As a result, they pick up story leads and ideas from their colleagues.

"In London the majority of BBC producers and editors I know read only the Guardian or the Independent," says Gross. "Because of this they acquire a one-sided picture of events and developments, and this in turn is conveyed to viewers. I remember one features writer from the Daily Mail. He had no particular knowledge of the Middle East or views on the conflict. He was sent to Israel to write a human-interest story on child victims of the conflict. Yet in conversation it turned out he had absolutely no idea that Israeli children had also been killed. He assumed that they were all Palestinian. He had simply picked up this impression from the BBC and others."

While some journalists are careless, sloppy, or ignorant, others are on a crusade. Robert Fisk, the Beirut-based correspondent for the Independent, is a prime example. Israel-bashing has become his stock in trade and he is famed for his biased, often malicious dispatches.

A colleague of Fisk's says: "He [Fisk] is just a person whose mind has been closed. He writes very well; his main trouble is the size of his ego. He makes the facts fit his views and mixes up between reporting and campaigning. It is common knowledge that he plays loose and fast with his facts and his 'eyewitness' accounts."

But it's not just Fisk, or his newspaper.

A BBC reporter, who refuses to be named or identified, recalls reporting from Israel and the territories. "I found a pervasive mindset inside the BBC which dictated that the narrative was that the Israelis were killing the Palestinians.

"There was a failure to give credence to Israeli sources but to believe Palestinian ones. I once filed a story about [a certain incident] which, I found out, was wrong. I immediately called the BBC to tell them that the story wasn't true, but they decided to run it anyway, a number of times that day. Operation Defensive Shield was a huge failure on their part.

"It's not just the BBC of course. Suzanne Goldenberg [former Guardian correspondent in Israel] is a campaigner, not a reporter. Her political opinions were reflected in her reporting. One wonders if the Guardian's choice of a reporter with a Jewish-sounding name was a coincidence or a fig leaf."

Pickett sees the British media as being of vital importance in the electronic war against Israel.

"The global reach of the BBC, for example, must be recognized. Its World Service – in dozens of languages – is transmitted throughout the Muslim and Third World – precisely in those regions where Israel is demonized the most. If Israel wants to counter its negative image there, it has to try to find ways to offset the BBC here."

Indeed, Britain – with its integral place in the EU and Nato, its historical links with the Middle East, its special relationship with the US, and its veto power in the UN Security Council – is key to redressing the balance. In the war of words, truth, integrity and honesty, are the first casualties. It is in Israel's interest to insist that these are upheld.

SIDE BAR TO THE ABOVE ARTICLE

The subtext

There is a prevailing feeling among the Jewish community of Britain that the anti-Israel bias has an anti-Semitic subtext.

"A lot of it," says a BBC reporter who does not want his name used, "is about bringing down the Jews a peg or two. Until I started working as a correspondent I did not believe for a minute that anti-Israel attitudes in the media were in any way anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, working closely with foreign journalists in the last few years has made me change my mind in some cases.

"The post-Holocaust honeymoon is over for the Jews. No one is suggesting that Israel is perfect, but if you look at the tone of criticism, it is out of all proportion to any rational or objective analysis. I've covered a number of conflicts around the world, but the wholesale dehumanization of Israel makes me very uncomfortable. It also encourages anti-Semitic incidents, which is hardly surprising.

"If Israel is portrayed as a killer of children how can readers not have negative feelings towards Israel – and by extension towards Jews? The reporting during the intifada has shown that anti-Semitic attitudes are still ingrained in European societies deeper than many Europeans are themselves aware or prepared to admit."

Leader writer and foreign affairs specialist for The Times, Michael Binyon, rejects the idea of anti-Semitism as a factor in the anti-Israel reporting.

"I don't think anti-Semitism has anything to do with it, nor do I think it's a decisive factor in British life. What does happen is that there's anti-Israel campaigning, which is then transferred to Jewish lobbyists of Israel: Melanie Philips, Barbara Amiel (wife of Hollinger owner Conrad Black) and other commentators who are naturally very sensitive to this. In general, playing the anti-Semitic card gets people annoyed.

"The anti-Israel shift is related to the Likud government. Barak was criticized for wasting chances, but he wasn't seen to be doing the wrong thing. There's tremendous suspicion of Sharon's and Netanyahu's motives. The press department can only do so much, it cannot change government policies. The Palestinian leadership is also bad, but Israel has forced Arafat into a martyr role."

Reporting on a conflict, says Binyon, is a question of getting the balance right.

"This is true not just in Israel but also in Cyprus or Northern Ireland. However, there's particular scrutiny of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict due to its implication: it has gone right across the Muslim world and is causing all kinds of reactions, a lot more than Kashmir. This is because it's one of the few foreign issues which America takes an active interest in, since it's a domestic issue there."

But even if Israel is getting bad publicity in the British press, can it have any serious consequences?

Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain are on the rise. At the same time a number of boycotts have been officially announced against Israel within academic and commercial circles as well as the entertainment industry. Calls for the boycotting of Israeli goods have proliferated; anti-war demonstrations are regularly hijacked by pro-Palestinian supporters waving anti-Israel placards and racist banners; and Israel-bashing has become the "bon ton" at dinner parties.

Says Tom Gross, who worked in Israel as a reporter for six years: "The systematic building up of a false picture of Israel as aggressor, and deliberate killer of babies and children, is helping to slowly chip away at Israel's legitimacy. How can ordinary people elsewhere not end up hating such a country?"

“BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION”

The BBC becomes the story
By Douglas Davis
The Jerusalem Post
April 2, 2003

The media is a window on the war, but it is also a weapon, as the BBC has demonstrated since the start of the Iraq war. Such is the anger it has generated among some of its critics that this very British institution has been dubbed the "Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation."

Now a senior cabinet minister, John Reid, the chairman of the ruling Labor Party, has joined the band of BBC critics by accusing it of behaving as "a friend of Baghdad."

The BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr, shrugged off the criticism: "Ministers are angry they can control where reporters go but what they cannot control is what they see," he pronounced airily. "Ministers seem to think anyone taking a balanced view is a friend of Baghdad."

Cabinet ministers are indeed troubled that the BBC is projecting a deeply negative image of the allies' performance on the battlefield while ignoring its significant achievements: "It's almost as if the BBC has its own war plan and if the army don't conform to what they think it should be doing then it's a 'setback'," said one unnamed British government official.

This view is supported by none other than the BBC's own defense correspondent, Paul Adams, currently based in the Gulf, who delivered a devastating critique in a memo to senior BBC executives last week.

"I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties,'" he wrote. "This is simply NOT TRUE. Nor is it true to say ... that coalition forces are fighting 'guerrillas.' It may be guerrilla warfare but they are not guerrillas.

"And who dreamt up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price'? The truth is exactly the opposite. The gains are huge and the costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected."

Commenting on the affair, The Washington Post diplomatically observed that the BBC was "taking flak for its cover-all-sides approach," quoting one of the army of BBC reporters deployed in the region, former Jerusalem correspondent Lyse Doucet: "Many commentators say it's not just Saddam Hussein who is under attack, but Iraq: its dignity and honor and the honor of the entire Arab world." Another BBC reporter boldly read a headline from an Arab newspaper which declared: "A Day of Glorious Losses."

Daily Telegraph columnist Barbara Amiel noted bluntly that "the BBC's News and Current Affairs doesn't bother honoring values of even-handedness. It has become an undisguised opponent of American policies and of Britain's insofar as they coincide with America's. This is especially true of Middle East policy."

None of these accusations of imbalance and inaccuracy, of course, will come as a surprise to media consumers in Israel. What makes the BBC's behavior particularly heinous in the current circumstances is the relentless indulgence of its penchant for what might be politely termed "moral equivalence" at a time when Britain is at war with a brutal enemy and its servicemen are dying on the battlefield (remember, the BBC is a public service broadcaster funded by British taxpayers).

This is not to suggest the BBC should offer a diet of jingoistic reports from the front or prejudice the standards of journalism that other major media organizations strive to maintain.

But nor should it allow its anti-Western petticoat to show as it competes with Al-Jazeera to prove its objectivity and independence.

BBC BOSS ADMITS “DAILY” MISTAKES IN IRAQ

BBC boss admits 'daily' mistakes in Iraq
By Jason Deans
The Guardian
March 28, 2003

A senior BBC News executive today admitted that the reporting of allied military claims in Iraq that later prove false, such as heralding the fall of Umm Qasr at least nine times, had "left the public feeling less well-informed than it should be".

Mark Damazer, the deputy director of BBC News, also admitted the BBC had been making mistakes "on a daily basis" during the first week of the Iraq conflict, but denied there was any deliberate bias towards either the pro or anti-war camps.

"I don't deny for a moment that the accumulation of things that have happened in the first week, such as the false claims about the fall of Umm Qasr and the surrender of the Iraqi 51st division, have left the public feeling they are not as well informed as they should be," Mr Damazer said.

"But it's perfectly proper for us to say 'a British defence source has said there's an uprising in Basra' and not report it as gospel truth. We attribute wherever possible to a source. The secret is attribution, qualification and scepticism," he added.

Mr Damazer said allegations by the anti-war lobby that the BBC had become "shackled" by the government and military were "profoundly ill-judged and unfair".

"Although it's unquestionably true that we make mistakes, and on a daily basis, we don't only make them in [a pro-war] direction," he added, speaking last night at a meeting of Media Workers Against the War.

Mr Damazer admitted one of the areas where the BBC had made mistakes was in its use of language, but that it was seeking to put this right.

"If we have used the word 'liberate' in our own journalism, as in 'such and such a place had been liberated by allied forces', that's a mistake," he said.

"That is the wrong language to use without evidence of Iraqi people feeling as though they have been liberated," Mr Damazer added.

He said it was also "not good" to open a news bulletin by announcing that the death of two soldiers was the "worst possible news for the armed forces".

Mr Damazer added that although the death of two soldiers was obviously the "worst possible news for their families", far worse things could happen on the battlefield with far greater loss of life, for which language such as "the worst possible news for the armed forces" would be more appropriate.