Is this really happening?
On the main news this morning, there was a report about mass graves found in Iraq. The BBC’s Baghdad reporter told us in solemn tones that children’s remains were found too. Presumably this was given prominence to emphasise the evil of the regime that came before the current one.
Yet unreported on the main news - and also missing from the BBC News’ homepage - was that the US army was killing in Falluja that very day (an objective fact): Aljazeera says US troops fired on a car on the main highway between Falluja and Ramadi, killing five members of the same family travelling in the vehicle. The dead included a woman and child.
OK. One might say - but this is the necessary evil to achieve “freedom” in Iraq. One might say that. One wonders, though, why it isn’t reported with anything like the same concern.
There is a fact about the mass graves that skews things: “They date from the late 80s” the BBC correspondent informed us. A fact, for sure, but supplied without the awkward historical context that the US was still keen on Saddam at the time. Presumably as Reagan sought to feed the dictator more weapons, “freedom” was also the aim.
It’s significant that nobody is asked today to defend this position, particularly on Margaret Thatcher’s 79th birthday. She sent her foreign secretary to Baghdad to celebrate Saddam’s anniversary in power when it was well known he was digging mass graves. Her own isn’t so far off and it will be too late to ask. Yet who can ask? The definition of “journalist” seems now to be “Someone who knows what can and cannot be asked”.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
