The British Army Rebels Against Propaganda

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17844.htm

The British Army Rebels Against Propaganda

By John Pilger

06/07/07 "ICH" - --- - -An experienced British officer serving in Iraq has written to the BBC describing the invasion as "illegal, immoral and unwinnable" which, he says, is "the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers". In a letter to the BBC's Newsnight and Medialens.org he accuses the media's "embedded coverage with the US Army" of failing to question "the intentions and continuing effects of the US-led invasion and occupation".

He says most British soldiers regard their tours as "loathsome", during which they "reluctantly (provide) target practice for insurgents, senselessly haemorrhaging casualties and squandering soldiers' lives, as part of Bush's vain attempt to delay the inevitable Anglo-US rout until after the next US election." He appeals to journalists not to swallow "the official line/ White House propaganda".

In 1970, I made a film in Vietnam called The Quiet Mutiny in which GIs spoke out about their hatred of that war and its "official line/White House propaganda". The experiences in Iraq and Vietnam are both very different and strikingly similar. There was much less "embedded coverage" in Vietnam, although there was censorship by omission, which is standard practice today.

What is different about Iraq is the willingness of usually obedient British soldiers to speak their minds, from General Richard Dannatt, Britain's current military chief, who said that the presence of his troops in Iraq "exacerbates the security problem", to General Michael Rose who has called for Tony Blair to be impeached for taking Britain to war "on false grounds" – remarks that are mild compared with the blogs of squaddies.

snip//

There is a last-ditch sense about this kind of propaganda. Seymour Hersh said recently, " made a decision that because of the totally dwindling support for the war in Iraq, they would go back to the al-Qaeda card, although there's no empirical basis. Most of the pros will tell you the foreign fighters are a couple of per cent and they're sort of leaderless... there's no attempt to suggest there's any significant co-ordination of these groups, but the press keeps going ga-ga about al-Qaeda... it's just amazing to me."

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