- The Bulletin, 28 October 2004
No matter who wins the US Presidential election next week the quagmire in Iraq will only get stickier. The figures tell the story. The US has 150,000 troops in Iraq. This is far too few and always has been. But it was not only the wildly optimistic, unrealistic view of the Bush Administration that was responsible for the shortfall. There were simply not enough troops available. [more...]
- 17 April 2002
The messengers are being shot again. The Daily Telegraph columnist Barbara Amiel has opened fire on war correspondents reporting from Israel, accusing them of bringing bad news. She says they have "abandoned balanced reporting", "ignored the relatively heavy Israeli casualties", published Palestinian rumours about Israeli "massacres" and adopted a generally anti-Semitic agenda - "many of them have been doing the work of Goebbels without bothering to wear the brown uniform identifying their agenda". [more...]
- 26 November 2001
So far, not a single British or American soldier has died in action in Afghanistan. On the other hand, in just one week, seven Western war correspondents were killed there. The conclusion is inescapable - it is now safer to be a member of the fighting forces than a representative of the media. What's going on? [more...]
- October 2001
There comes a point in every war when the government will blame the media - as the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has done - because things are going wrong. What Straw said. Some truth in this 24-hours news. Nothing so stale as yesterday's news day on war. [more...]
- October 2001 [Syndey Morning Herald]
There is an irreconcilable conflict in the way war is reported that the Allied attack on Afghanistan and the anthrax terror in the United States have once again highlighted. Two quotations explain this conflict better than any reasoned argument. [more...]
- October 2001 [The Australian]
There is an irreconcilable conflict in the way war is reported that the Allied attack on Afghanistan and the anthrax terror in the United States have once again highlighted. Two quotations explain this conflict better than any reasoned argument. [more...]
- [not used]
President Bush has decided to let the CIA off the leash. He has given it an extra $1 billion and told it that it is no longer banned from assassinating America's enemies, including Osama bin Laden and members of his terrorist networks. [more...]
- [not used]
At the height of the Second World War there was a meeting of censors in Washington to decide what the United States government should tell its people about the progress of the struggle against Japan. One censor summed up the general feeling: "I'd tell them nothing until the war's over and then I'd tell them who won." [more...]
- 9 October 2001
The war against the Taliban began at night. That was appropriate because the governments of Britain and the United States seem determined to keep their citizens in the dark about what is really happening in Afghanistan since the missile strikes started. [more...]
- 4 October 2001
The way wars are reported in the Western media follows a pattern that is depressingly predictable: stage one, the crisis; stage two, the demonisation of the enemy's leader; stage three, the demonisation of the enemy as individuals; and stage four, atrocities. [more...]
- 29 September 2001
If you were Usama bin Laden today where would you be and what would you be doing? With the mightest power the world has ever known on your case, assisted by most of its allies - except New Zealand - where would you hide out? [more...]
- 16 September 2001
The Western intelligence comunity is facing its biggest shake-up since the end of the Cold War. After its miserable failure to to predict the terrorist attack the United States, the director of the CIA, George Tenet, will either resign or be forced to do so, and questions will surely be asked in Britain about the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 and the Security Service, MI5. [more...]
- 15 September 2001
Five years ago Hollywood produced a spate of movies about attacks on earth by aliens from other planets. The most extreme of these films was "Independence Day". In it alien space ships station themselves over every major city on earth and then blast them to pieces [more...]
|
