In the Line of Fire (BBC 9/11/03)

[tony draper]

I wasn't thinking specificly about the Sun or the Mirror, if you read trash expect trash, I remember that bubble brained ginger haired bint on sky news who used to jump about and just about wet her knickers with glee evertime she had a setback to report, as for the embeded journos being mouthpieces,for the military, I think the what about the ones in Bagdad?they were just mouthpiebes for Sadams regeim, I think that fecker raggy omar spent more time in front of a mirror than doing research, I repeat the coverage bordered on treasonable.
The media in this country have way to much power, they realised just how much power when they instigated and fermented the the hysteria at the death of princess Di, I think a collective desision was made at the begining of that war to do as much as possible to stir up anti war feeling by disgracefully biased reporting.
We have reached a point were the government making desisions with more concideration given to how the media will react, than the public now.
It is time the feckin news media in this country was slapped down and slapped down hard, its time to get them back to reporting events and facts, not opinions and not creating bloody news.

[Beeayeate]

Drapes

With you on this, every word squire.

Especially this bit . . .

It is time the feckin news media in this country was slapped down and slapped down hard, its time to get them back to reporting events and facts, not opinions and not creating bloody news.

On varoius news stations tonight regarding the Italian disaster, all flavours of reporters were asked to give their opinions. The only facts anybody seemed interested in was what was the latest dead and wounded count. No robust condemnation of the perpatrators though.

Still, no journos were injured so that's allright then.

[tony draper]

Things have got much worse with the advent of 24 hour news channels, they milk every story to death in order to fill the time.
I remember years ago when the local tv news got those small outside broadcast type cameras ,the twats must have thought they had to emulate the Americans in the news gathering style, almost the first day they deployed this new technology, a little girl was knocked down and killed on a road not far from the studio, still they got there to late to see the body carted away, so umbelievable they showed the blood running down the gutter, fecking ghould bastard scum, the difference was then that there was a terrific public outcry at this,nowadays they get away with downright lies and bias because the politicians and even the judiciary are terrified of them.
What I want from the news is A said B to C, or this event occured at this location, I do not want the opinion of some spotty faced tosser on what A said to B or why that event occured,if I want editorial comment opinion or expert analysis on the above I will watch a program like Newsnight or Panorama.

[EESDL]

Hit the nail on the chaps:

Journos have stopped reporting news and now spend a majority of the time speculating.

Oh, my mistake, they do report news, news of troop convoys travelling North to Baggers, live, counting the trucks and as good as descibing the border crossing so the enemy can decide on the best tactics to use against Allied Forces. Wonder how many lives that one cost?

Journos posting on here: stick to confirming 'aircraft spotter' details, please do not think that your defence of the Media's behaviour will ever be accepted. You seem to forget that we have seen Journos in 'action', their disregard for confidentiallity (except when defending a source), their disregard for accuracy, their disregard for factual content, their disregard for a victims' privacy (be they civvy or military).

I'm delighted to hear of the planned marches in London, celebrating the fall of one of the most atrocious regimes in recent times. Countless lives will have been saved by the actions of personnel but I guess you'll not be reporting that. You'll no-doubt join the trendies and start ranting, seeking sensations.....

I hate the Septics arrogance, they're similar to the Frogs. However, like the Frogs, you have to admire the courage of their convictions and their resolve and logic. If only we had the same traits, do you think we'd be in the Eurocratic/Common Market fiasco that we are in now?

I suggest that the reason we went to war was not to rid Saddam of his WMD but because we didn't finish the job last time. We left a time bomb waiting to explode and funny old thing - BANG!

Now, War Photographers, they are a different breed, usually unaffected by vanity and the need to get on telly, concentrating more on providing pictures where the reader can make up their own minds........

Journos, nearly as untrustworthy as Politicians - how many troops died because Nott informed the Argies of their location?

[I_stood_in_the_door]

'no plan survives contact with the enemy'

van moltke, i believe

in this case, most of the bbc journos would be classed as the enemy following their biased and unsupportive reporting during the conflict

'expect chaos, because chaos will reign!'

CO 9 Para Bn, prejump briefing prior to Merville Bty assault, Normandy 1944.

surely the SF guy is not to blame here.

aren't the old trigger happy fast jet guys (even the chromers) supposed to id the tgt prior to any engagement? post blue on blue sops mit granby?

as to reporters reporting troop movements etc, didnt we learn anything following the great bbc's slip up in the falklands '2 Para are marching to goose green so watch out, chaps'?

rant over

isitd

[Jackonicko]

EESDL

You're almost too silly to bother responding to, and your over-simplified rant is far too dependant on stupid stereotypes to be answered sensibly.

There are, however, bad and good in every profession, people who do good and people who do harm, people who are a credit to their profession and people who just make their ilk look like to$$ers.

You seem to hate the media, the yanks, the Frogs, and presumably liberals, asylum seekers and anyone else who doesn't fit within your narrow view of the world. How on earth did you ever scrape through a commissioning board?

Your opinion as to why we went to war is interesting, but the issue of WMD is of concern to the media because that was the reason offered up by Bush and Blair for going to war. The press did not dredge it up out of nowhere.

[Scud-U-Like]

Let's not be too high and mighty about the press. Most people get the news presentation they deserve. Very few people are satisfied with receiving unadulterated facts. Look at the papers most people read: the Sun, the Daily Mail and the other dross. People want sansational news, because most of them get very little excitement in their lives.

Twenty-four hour news channels are there because there is a demand for them. Unfortunately, demand usually outstrips supply, so the quality of their content suffers. Media hype is no longer the preserve of the gutter press. Most of the broadsheets have resorted to hyping-up the news as well.

If you're so gullible that you can't view all news presentation with a critical eye, whose fault is that?

[tony draper]

I disagree Scud U like, the media themselves created a kind of sick voyeurism and now spend endless hours pandering to it,the media circus that surrounds every tradgety, especialy when a child goes missing or a childs body is found borders on the sick, should I say is sick, the protocol is to get the parents of the child in front of the cameras as soon as they can stand preferably as emontionaly drained as possible this is much better TV apparently, then they can fill hours of their 24hr news channel with endless coverage and speculation on the police hunt for the killer and on the trial once they have caught them.
To the media any flood famine murder disaster or tragety of any kind is mere entertainment now, even warfare is just part of showbiz.
People didn't demand a 24hr news channel anymore than they demanded a soap opera about the east end of London, the media will hae calculated that if they intrioduced a 24hr news channel they would attract certain viewing figures, and viewing figures are the god, although why this should be so for the BBC who do not need to attract advertising has always baffled me.
As a aside if you want to read how a real war correspondent covered a war read some of James Camerons words on the Indo Pakistan war, men like him must be spinning in their graves at passes for a journalism now.

[Paterbrat]

Jacvkonicko, that you can respond with calm tones to angry outburts does not make you right. While Draper has put in crudely it does not lack a certain undeniable gut feeling felt by many. That is that the press, while pandering to the pruriant curiosity that undeniably exists for blood gore and bad news, has created and continues to expand it's percieved market. It pushes out ever more 'news'. Unfortunately what passes for news is blood gore and political speculation. Yes the 'truth' is a commodity that the press is happy to persue in our name, the problem is that the 'truth is different things to different people. Perhaps we could all do with a little less of the 'truth' and the non-stop ever increasing media sensationalism and cult of personality that we see in the daily offering we get of 'NEWS'.

[Pilgrim101]

Weapons of Mass destruction like Tabun, VX, Mustard Gas and Sarin were without doubt in the hands of the Iraqis, vide Halabja, Khormal, Dujailah, the Faw Peninsula and other situations including the many experimental "death rows" in Iraqi prisons. The media seem to be very disappointed that they weren't fielded against us and are inclined to regard this fact as sheer proof that the Iraqis had no such weapons.

The media's own coverage and explicit photos of those and many other atrocities is evidence enough. Some three hundred thousand Iraqis also died at the hands of the regime in the very recent past. This figure is generally uncontested, and regrettably is probably a conservative estimate given the nature of the regime and it's wholesale descent into barbarity against it's own people following the slaughter of the failed Iran/Iraq campaign and ruthless invasion of Kuwait.

The nature of the regime and the people behind it was such that they would never have given up the WMD option unless forced to do so. The weakness of Kofi Anan and the UN was ruthlessly exploited for years by the Iraqis, and the French and Germans too for that matter.

If Saddam's game plan from 1991 until 2003 was to string out the UN indefinitely and "hint" darkly about the deployment and use of such weapons against us if we had the temerity to strike his so called invincible forces, then his master strategy was somewhat flawed !

As one who had to don full "three romeo" kit in 1990/1991 and again to a lesser extent this year, then I can assure all that we in fact did take the risks very seriously indeed. Even the Journos put their kit on at the drop of a klaxon so it seems they took it seriously enough then too !

[A Civilian]

We know that he had WMD's because we sold him Anthrax during the 80's. We know that he had Tabun & Mustard Gas because he used it against the Kurds and the Iranians. However we also know that no WMD's and chemical agents existed in Iraq in 2003 and probably as far back as 1995.

That Saddam kicked out the UN people in 1997 is proabably more it do with his fustration at them being forced to continue the useless Un search because the countries on the UNSC refused to believe the country was free of them due to political reasons "the longer the scantions go on sooner or later Saddam will be coup'ed". This never happened and when the oppitunity of taking out Saddam happened on 11/9 the end game was set in motion. Do you guys remember the German and French "no adventures" motion that they made on 12/9/01? it was a direct response to Bush wanting to go into Iraq.

The media is being blamed for pointing out all this and not buying the government line. Without these people telling us the facts were no better than the soviet civilians were under their totalitarian system.

[Pilgrim101]

Civilian

Have you ever been in the Middle East ? Your assertion that there are still no WMD's is still just as unproven as the fact that there is stuff in bunkers or wherever in the vast hinterland that is Iraq. The fighting goes on and just because we haven't found Saddam doesn't mean that he was never there.

The evidence of Iraq's aim to produce and stock WMD's is definitely there and I think you'll find the Germans sold a lot of dual use Chemicals to the Iraqis and the irresponsible French even helped them with Nuclear technology in the eighties (The Osirak Reactor, which the Israelis thankfully stomped on) The so called supergun affair was masterminded by a rogue Brit/Canadian ? scientist (Bull) who wasn't listening to the warnings and who was ultimately killed in Belgium. I think we, the UK, sold them a couple of Lathes and some steel tubing which arguably was left to run until the eleventh hour before cancellation to frustrate the Iraqi plan for the HARP project at the last minute and cost them years of development. We'll never really know will we ?

Most of the weapons we went up against were East Bloc and French supplied. For example T72 Tanks, BMP IFV's, 152mm Artillery pieces, Roland Missiles, 100mm, 57mm AAA and SAM Missiles from France and CIS - including some frighteningly modern night vision stuff which was supplied to Iraq several months before the war. Mig jets too so where is all the western equipment we are supposed to have sold the Iraqis ?

So the Iraqi armed forces were equipped with mostly Russian, French and even some Brazilian equipment and any reference to the Brits or Americans selling lethal hardware is usually locked into the Cold War early eighties when Saddam was seeing off another Pariah state, Iran (Remember the Embassy hostage crisis).

[EESDL]

Jacko
You just couldn't let it go without some sort of 'level-headed, holier-than-thou' retort. The snag is - you missed the point, your critical eye failed you.
Have you seen 'wife swap' those people have votes journo and you've played right into their hands by extolling the 'virtues' of news searching.
By the way, in the work that 'we' do, if you are not level-headed and open-minded, you have accidents. As to accepting whatever line the Gov pushes out, cheap, pointless shot - have you seen the Gov's plans for further cutbacks/short changing the Armed Forces? That's right Jacko, I believe every word all politicians say..Doh!
Suggest you stick to writing articles for GA mags.

All the best, from your 'silly boy'!

[Jackonicko]

You'd probably expect a journo not to let the facts get in the way of a good rant, but in the interests of accuracy, I have to point out that I didn't extoll anything.

I simply criticised you for an immature, over simplistic, rant in which you condemned all journos for 'crimes' which most of us do not commit. There are some appallingly bad journalists, some journalists have no ethics and no common sense, and some have no insight or knowledge of what they write about. All of your accusations ("disregard for confidentiallity (except when defending a source)", "disregard for accuracy", "disregard for factual content", and "disregard for a victims' privacy") could be accurately levelled at certain, unrepresentative individuals, but by levelling such low accusations at an entire profession, you make yourself look silly.

Your comment about 'Wife Swap' leads me to suppose that you're not a fan of democracy. It's certainly an imperfect system, and I have some sympathy with those who feel that not everyone is sufficiently wise to be accorded the privilege of exercising a vote. But any alternative is even more imperfect, and I'd no more deprive the ignorant and stupid of their vote than I'd deprive arrogant, small-minded bigots of theirs.

You originally suggested that: "the reason we went to war was not to rid Saddam of his WMD but because we didn't finish the job last time. We left a time bomb waiting to explode and funny old thing - BANG!”

You may be right. Many of us deplored the fact that GWB's father failed to finish the job first time around. Had GWB and Tony implicitely acknowledged that as being the reason to go to war, many of us would have been less angry (I'd personally still have felt that it was probably counter-productive, in that it was likely to increase the danger to the UK from extremists and fundamentalist terrorism) since at least it would have been honest.

Instead, the war was 'sold' to us on the basis of a 'clear and present' WMD threat to us and to our forces, and there was a clear inference that this meant real weapons, deployed or capable of being deployed against us. Had this been the case, some evidence would surely have been found.

What's remarkable is that there's so little evidence of any ongoing reserach and development programmes, or of weapons or precursor chemicals waiting for testing or trials.

[Pilgrim101]

Jacko

Eloquently put but then we expect that of you folks wot studied 'ard at English Lit

We're still looking and, having already alluded to the size of this f g dump with rabid nutters round every street corner then the priority is to keep one's skin unpunctured and to bring a semblance of order to people who have never known any kind of freedom whatsoever. I could hide a f g aircraft carrier in the place and it would take years to find it.

The deeply entrenched internal divisions here are more threatening than any hatred or resentment of the coalition forces and it would take a less than benign dictatorship to hold it together - a sort of Bosnia but not quite so civilised . That is not on the agenda here.

As you may guess from some of my few contributions, Blair is not my favourite person at all, but - paradoxically - he had absolutely no political points to gain at all from his decision at home or in Europe and in my view he has gonads the size of water melons when the crunch comes. Neither he nor Bush are exactly bathing themselves in glory or political capital from their decision and I would venture to say that they have both shown more honesty and commitment to the Iraqi people than the Iraqis themselves or self serving Germans and French who are revelling in every setback here. There will be many more, but in the end Saddam will end up in a shallow uncared for grave and his people will move on to a much better life without him.

Finally, the Iraqi surrender at Safwan in 1991 was a political expediency forced on the Coalition by a weak willed UN who kept on and on about the "mandate" to free Kuwait but go no further. I figure you had to be there at the time but why should the US and UK have gone any further then against the will of the UN and lots of European "Allies" who had no stomach for a long term commitment. You could argue that it was that timidity which cost us dear in the longer term and one main reason why Bush and Blair went for it this time round. How long should we have waited for full Iraqi compliance with UN resolution after resolution ?

The broken promise to the Shia uprising post the 1991 Iraqi surrender is one area where we should be ashamed of ourselves though

[A Civilian]

Blair ... and in my view he has gonads the size of water melons when the crunch comes

I would of thought that he'd have even bigger gonads if he stood up to bush and told the nutter were to go That he didnt just goes to show what a weak willed man he is. As for locating WMD's if they had of existed they would of been found by now. 45 of the 52 'playing cards' of the old Iraqi regime including Saddams VP have been captured and here you are seriously expecting us to believe that none of them know were the bio-bombs were buried Wakeup man they never existed!

As for the Iraqi's suffering at the hands of Saddam f***em I really dont give a toss. Every single country in the middle east is a lost cause IMO including Israel. They can rot in hell for all I care.

[Pilgrim101]

Civilian

Quote

As for the Iraqi's suffering at the hands of Saddam f***em I really dont give a toss. Every single country in the middle east is a lost cause IMO including Israel. They can rot in hell for all I care.

Unquote

Let's just keep the status quo then and do f k all about f k all until their problems are at your street corner.

Personally, I'm glad I participated in some small measure in the downfall of the Iraqi regime. You just stay home and criticise without risking f k all except spilling your martini in the pub when the debate gets really heated then

[I_stood_in_the_door]

im with you pilgrim!

well said mucker.

[nimrodcatcher]

Hear hear Pilgrim.....

So, the WMD "never existed"???

As one who spent most of the first half of this year driving (and flying!) around the JOA I can say with some certainty that large tracts of Iraq are featureless desert....that should come as no surprise to anyone with half a brain.

Also, much of the old industrial infrastructure is completely derelict...some of the damage can be attributed to Granby and Telic, much more to the Iran/Iraq war (which lasted 8 years or so, don't forget) and some to general neglect......

So, the chances of finding evidence among that lot, with limited resources and in the face of a rapidly deteriorating Sy situation are very limited, IMHO.

Let's face facts:

The regime was evil...
Sanctions-busting oil sales provided resources...
The motive to produce and deploy WMD was there...

Something had to be done.....and I, for one, am proud to have played a part. If only a few more of my fellow countrymen shared my outlook.....

[I_stood_in_the_door]

nimrod,

there are quite a few of proud and happy men willing to stand up and say the same, mate. seems very 'in' to say 'i didnt support it'.

whilst not supporting mr bliar, i truly believed that we the willing where led by the knowing (?) and did a grand job.

fancy a beer mucker?



isitd

ps. do you need a big net?