BBC indicted as accessory to war crimes in Istanbul PDF Print E-mail
David Miller - Unspun

The World Tribuunal on Iraq has indicted media organisations, including the BBC for their role in aiding and abetting US and UK war crimes in Iraq. The World Tribunal received scant attention in the Western media and there have been no headlines reporting the findings on the media.


The Tribunal issued its findings on 27th June after a gruelling and harrowing four day session hearing evidence. The charges laid 'Against the Major Corporate Media' were as follows:

1. Disseminating the deliberate falsehoods spread by the governments of the US and the UK and failing to adequately investigate this misinformation. This even in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Among the corporate media houses that bear special responsibility for promoting the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, we name the New York Times, in particular their reporter Judith Miller, whose main source was on the payroll of the CIA. We also name Fox News, CNN and the BBC.
2. Failing to report the atrocities being committed against Iraqi people by the occupying forces.

As the Tribunal noted 'The legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Iraq is located in the collective conscience of humanity.'

Spinwatch took part in the evidence sessions and made the following charges:

Deliberately misleading the public about WMD, Al qaeda and about their intentions

'a clever plan': Iraq

The assault on Iraq was a long term plan of the US right. But it was only the attack of 9/11 that provided the circumstances to put the plan into action. In early 2001 Bush officials were candid that Iraq was not a threat. For instance Colin Powell noted in February 2001 that 'He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors'. 'The truth is' noted UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's advisor that what had changed was 'not the pace' of Saddam Hussein's WMD programmes, 'but our tolerance of them post-11 September'. Between September 2001 and the spring of 2002 the plan to invade Iraq was Bush administration and by March of that year the Blair administration was fully onboard. The message delivered to Condoleezza Rice by Blair's most senior foreign affairs advisor, Sir David Manning, was the Blair 'would not budge in [his] support for regime change'. The Americans pressed on with their policy, but recognised the need for a political strategy to deliver it. So 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy' as Richard Dearlove, the Head of MI6 put it. British officials regarded this strategy, which included attempting to link Al Qaeda and Iraq as 'frankly unconvincing'. They conveyed the support of the UK government alerted them to the difficulties faced by the British. Manning stating to Rice that Blair, ‘had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States.’ In order to do this what was needed was a 'clever' plan which ‘must be very carefully done’ as Meyer and Manning respectively put it.

According to the Cabinet Office briefing paper for the Prime Minister’s meeting on 23 July 2002 the ‘conditions necessary’ for military action included ‘justification/legal base; an international coalition; a quiescent Israel/Palestine; a positive risk/benefit assessment; and the preparation of domestic opinion.’ There were two key elements to the plan. The first element was to use the United Nations to ‘wrong foot Saddam on the inspectors' thus delivering a Causus Belli. In other words the UK government persuaded the US government that by manipulating the UN to provoke a war, they could gain greater legitimacy for the invasion. Blair endorsed this at the meeting in July saying 'it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow n the UN inspectors… If the political context were right, people would support regime change'. The second was to play up the threat from Iraq. This was necessary to prepare ‘domestic opinion’. According to the Cabinet Office this would involve the following:

Time will be required to prepare public opinion in the UK that it is necessary to take military action against Saddam Hussein. There would also need to be a substantial effort to secure the support of Parliament. An information campaign will be needed which has to be closely related to an overseas information campaign designed to influence Saddam Hussein, the Islamic World and the wider international community. This will need to give full coverage to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, including his WMD, and the legal justification for action.

The organizational apparatus to conduct this worldwide and domestic campaign was being put in place by this stage, thoroughly overhauled by the US and UK governments post 2001 and co-ordinated by the Office of Global communications created in July 2002. Only the content of the campaign remained to be worked out. This was prepared and launched two months later in the US and the UK involving the full weight of US and UK government resources and a wide range of government departments, PR consultancies, think tanks and intelligence agencies. The US government focused on the alleged (and quite false) connection between Iraq and 9/11 or at least ‘terrorism’ in general. This was so successful that by the end of 2002 two thirds of US citizens believed that Iraq was involved in September 11th attacks. In the UK by contrast a heavier weight was laid on the alleged threat posed by Iraq. ‘To get public and Parliamentary support for military options’ wrote the Political Director at the Foreign Office, we have to be ‘convincing’ that:
- the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for
- it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).

Ricketts also noted that describing the policy as the US had done as 'regime change' 'does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam' 'Much better' would be a plan that Straw himself 'suggested' which was 'to make the objective ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD'. This would be 'easier to justify in terms of international law'. This is clear evidence of he thinking confirmed by Paul wolfowitz after the invasion when he said that it was for 'reasons of bureaucracy' that WMD was settled on.


Deliberately targeting journalists

What we do know is that the US and UK follow a policy which sees information as an element in warfare and that they classify it very simply as 'friendly' and 'unfriendly' in just those words, in their publicly available policy documents. Friendly information is to be integrated as part of the military effort and propaganda strategy. - thus embedded journalists were assigned an informal 'rank' in the military which reported up to the next rank (ie the press officer/media minder).

'Deny degrade and destroy' is the strategy adopted for unfriendly information. Again all information is included in this category from Iraqi Republican guard command and control systems through hostile media (such as Al Jazeera) to western journalists who were not embedded. Thus they can see no meaningful distinction between 'enemy communications' and 'independent journalism'. There is no such thing in their schema. This is why government ministers such as Geoff Hoon were able to threaten journalists that they should be embedded of face the consequences. This also explains the attacks on Al Jazeera in Afghanistan (when the Pentagon detected 'terrorist activity', by which they meant journaists interviewing members of the Taliban). The same is true for the Pentagon officials who told BBC reporter Kate Adie that satellite uplinks (used by independent TV crews) detected 'in theatre' would be 'targeted down' ie attacked and destroyed. So I would say that they have adopted a deliberate policy which because it fails to recognise the importance of independent media is in breach of the UN convention on freedom of expression and the right to information. And of culpable killing - of murdering journalists.



The Mainstream and corporate media.

Specimen charges agains the media:
The Tribunal indicts the following media institutions and reporters for variously:
- Spreading, amplifying government propaganda on the alleged threat posed by Iraq (The alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, including biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and 'weapons programmes'); The alleged links with al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks; The motivations of the coalition in wishing to disarm the Iraqi regime (specifically, the proposition that the US and UK were interested in bringing democracy to Iraq and that they were serious about desiring disarmament via the use of UN inspectors.
- Failing to interrogate or report critically on the government claims, and failure to allow expert critics of the coalition case access to the media.
- Failure and refusal to allow the anti war movement access to the media.
- Failure to resist government pressure via the use of denunciation/flak, the use of the law, censorship arrangement and various inquiries, resulting in self censorship, the sacking and resignation of journalists and broadcasters; failure to give proper public health warnings when news reports were compiled under restrictions imposed by the coalition particularly through the system of embedding.
- Failure to properly and openly acknowledge conflicts of interest between news organisations and their interests of their parent companies (with interests in the arms industry)
- Failure to provide balanced reporting of the case for and against war and failure to report the truth about events when able to do so. In particular failure to adequately report on the crimes against the Iraqi people committed during the sanctions regime, the invasion and during the occupation. In addition failure to report that government lies are well known and to provide as context the many documented cases of lies in the past
- Failure to resist the control of journalistic output imposed by the system of embedding whereby reporters were required to sign a contract stating that they must 'follow the orders and direction of the government'.
- Complicity with war crimes committed by coalition forces when journalists so integrated themselves into military command structures that they participated in military planning and operations. (in particular this applies to particular named journalists engaging in military action. I have assumed that in an illegal war, that all killings are war crimes. If only civilian killings are then an alternative form of words should be found. We do not know if the victims were civilians)
- Misinforming the public about the threat posed by Iraq with the result that most US citizens and significant proportion of UK citizens believed a quite false picture of the case for war.


The tribunal specifically notes the following indictments against mainstream journalists and news organisations.

BBC

The BBC is indicted for unbalanced coverage, for failing to access experts who would give a critical view; failure to access the anti war movement; showing very little scepticism about government claims; bowing under government pressure.

The structural over accessing of official voices is acknowledged in all the academic research produced on Iraq both studies showed that official sources dominated television. This picture shows overwhelming bias towards official sources.


The Guardian/The Observer

The Guardian and Observer are indicted on the grounds that they failed to fundamentally challenge or seriously question the government case on Weapons of Mass Destruction
Martin Woollacott summarised the standard pre-war media view in the Guardian on January 24:
"Among those knowledgeable about Iraq there are few, if any, who believe he [Saddam] is not hiding such weapons. It is a given." ('This drive to war is one of the mysteries of our time - We know Saddam is hiding weapons. That isn't the argument', Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, January 24, 2003)
…
The Observer's Andrew Rawnsley described how Blair was "genuinely disturbed - it would not be going too far to say petrified - about Saddam Hussein's potential ability to use weapons of mass destruction." ('How to deal with the American goliath', Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer, February 24, 2002) (source: MEDIA LENS MEDIA ALERT, 06 June 2003, Media Lens Alert: Mass Deception - How The Media Helped The Government Deceive The People www.medialens.org, )

The Independent
The Independent is indicted on a specimen charge of failing to properly report the skeptical case on the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The diplomatic editor of the independent, the self proclaimed 'arch sceptic' on WMD on the paper, notes that: 'no one would have risked having this paper, or probably any other' question the existence of any serious WMD in Iraq because: 'The whole government-generated consensus was the other way' and 'you have to remember how strong the consensus was on Iraq's weapons capability' (MEDIA LENS MEDIA ALERT 22nd October 2003 MEDIA ALERT: OUT ON A LIMB - PART 2 Senior Source at The Independent on Iraq, WMD and Editorials, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/2003/031022_Out_On_Limb_2.HTM)

Ben Brown
Ben Brown of the BBC is indicted for reporting as fact that Scud missiles had been fired by the Iraqi's on March 20 when this was a claim of the coalition (which was in fact false).

For example: 'The priority of the day was to shoot the incoming scuds out of the sky, because no-one could be certain if they were armed with lethal chemical or biological warheads.' (BBC1 10pm, 20.3.03).

Gavin Hewitt
Gavin Hewitt of the BBC is indicted for taking part in military activities furthering the aims of an illegal war. In particular he is indicted for being an accessory to war crimes by pointing out targets for the military.
I shouted across to the Captain 'that truck over there – I think these guys are going to attack us.' I thought the Captain would have sent one of the tanks to try and investigate. Within seconds a Bradley fighting vehicle was opening up – tracers were flying across the field… eventually the truck went up – boom – like this. And I was absolutely horrified. I thought for a moment that these could have been innocent civilians. I could have made a mistake and at that moment I thought 'are we getting too close to this?'… Then there was a secondary and tertiary explosion and this truck was full of grenades. And of course all the unit were delighted. From then on the bonding grew tighter.

Clive Myrie
Clive Myrie of the BBC is indicted for participating in military activities furthering the aims of an illegal war in particular by facilitating the supply of flares.
Clive Myrie
There was bullets flying everywhere. We get out of the, out of the Land Rover and we hide in a ditch. One of the
marines said; why don't you make yourself useful? And he's throwing these flares at me. And he's throwing the flares at me and I'm throwing them at the guy who's got to light them and send them off into the sky, and I'm thinking, why, what am I doing here?
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