British Official Admits the "Foreign Office" Manipulated Willing Media re: Iraq -John Pilger

[KoKo]

Published on Friday, February 7, 2014 by The Guardian
The Truth about the Criminal Bloodbath in Iraq Can't Be 'Countered' Indefinitely
The media cover-up has been a weapon in the crimes of western states since the first world war. But a reckoning is coming for those paid to keep the record straight
by John Pilger




A baby in a Baghdad hospital in July 2003. 'Half a million Iraqi infants died as a result of sanctions, according to Unicef.' Photograph: Joseph Barrak/AFP/Getty Images

Ten years later, in New York, I met the senior British official responsible for these "sanctions". He is Carne Ross, once known in the UN as "Mr Iraq". He is now a truth-teller. I read to him a statement he had made to a parliamentary select committee in 2007:

"The weight of evidence clearly indicates that sanctions caused massive human suffering among ordinary Iraqis, particularly children. We, the US and UK governments, were the primary engineers and offenders of sanctions and were well aware of the evidence at the time but we largely ignored it and blamed it on the Saddam government … effectively denying the entire population the means to live."

I said to him: "That's a shocking admission."

"Yes, I agree," he replied. "I feel ashamed about it" ...He described how the Foreign Office manipulated a willing media.

"We would control access to the foreign secretary as a form of reward to journalists. If they were critical, we would not give them the goodies of trips around the world. We would feed them factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we'd freeze them out."

In the build-up to the 2003 invasion, according to studies by Cardiff University and Media Tenor, the BBC followed the Blair government's line and lies, and restricted airtime to those opposing the invasion. When Andrew Gilligan famously presented a dissenting report on Today, he and the director general were crushed.

The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq cannot be "countered" indefinitely. Neither can the truth about our support for the medievalists in Saudi Arabia, the nuclear-armed predators in Israel, the new military fascists in Egypt and the jihadist "liberators" of Syria, whose propaganda is now BBC news. There will be a reckoning – not just for the Blairs, Straws and Campbells, but for those paid to keep the record straight.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/07-7

Original Source Link:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/07/west-criminal-bloodbath-iraq-media-cover-up