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Special to MWAW: “Decision Time” (BBC Radio 4, January 3 and Jan 6) was 45 minutes of propaganda for a US or Israeli military attack on Iran. The programme allowed a panel of pro-war, establishment figures to explain unchallenged how they saw the build-up to military action against Iran.

Presented by none other than Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, the programme’s guests were all elite, establishment figures, only one of whom (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) had any record of opposition to the Iraq war. Decision Time claims to “lift the lid on how those in power make the big decisions that affect all our lives, inviting listeners to hear the sort of arguments, calculations and heart-searching that take place as the Government wrestles with a decision it simply can’t avoid”. For such a broadcast to avoid becoming merely a propaganda opportunity for government officials, however, the guests on the show needed to be pressed hard on the nature of their calculations. For the programme to perform a public service to its audience, its guests needed to be held accountable for their thinking.

Yet Nick Robinson put none of these crucial points to his guests:

1. Iran is seen as a threat by some military and political elites in the West, but this opinion is not shared by the bulk of the population in Britain — on the contrary, President George W. Bush is seen as a greater threat to peace;

2. Oil is central to US/UK calculations about Iran. Astonishingly, the word “oil” was mentioned only once in the broadcast, and then only in passing;

3. There is a neo-conservative lobby in Washington that has pushed for an attack on Iran for many years, regardless of Iran’s nuclear programme (see e.g. Micheal Ledeen’s piece in the Financial Times, Sep 23, 2002);

4. There is a pro-Israeli lobby in Washington that has pushed for an attack on Iran for many years, regardless of Iran’s nuclear programme;

5. There are double standards in US/UK rhetoric on Iran — the programme made no mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal or of the USA’s recent backing for India’s nuclear programme;

6. Any military attack would result in thousands of Iranian deaths — it is regretable that the broadcast didn’t mention the consequences of Israel’s assault on Lebanon in July;

7. Any military attack, sanctions etc. would play into the hands of the extremists around Ahmadinejad and will be a major set-back to the cause of democracy in Iran;

8. Iran has no record of belligerence, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (unlike Israel), and is many years from having any sort of nuclear weapons capability (a fact admitted in passing by Reuel Marc Gerecht);

9. A Western military attack on Iran poses an enormous threat to world peace.

On the contrary, when Nick Robinson’s guests began to touch on some of these issues he repeatedly steered the conversation away from them.

Robinson’s questions accepted the premise that Iran poses a threat to Western interests, that the West is involved in military brinkmanship with Iran, and that it is obliged to keep secret any discussion of alternative, diplomatic solutions to the crisis that might avoid a military option. He described Iran as the “enemy … or … potential enemy”, and repeated the myth that Iran seeks to “wipe Israel off the map”.

The former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht repeatedly stated on the programme that Israel has already decided to attack Iran and that Robinson’s questions were therefore “academic”, yet Robinson declined to put this to his guests.

The broadcast was a discussion between the pro-war and anti-war wings of the British/US establishment. Both sides, however, share the same assumptions regarding the goals of diplomatic and military action: namely, the need use military and economic means to secure sources of essential raw materials and to open up markets for western goods. Robinson made no mention of the fact that millions of people in this country reject those assumptions. He made no mention of the fact that the Iraq war has made a mockery of claims to be defending democracy, peace and freedom — he said only that it has complicated the business of winning support for action against Iran.

As the New York Times noted on February 17th 2003: “The huge anti-war demonstrations around the world are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” By overlooking this second superpower — world public opinion represented by the leaders of the anti-war movement — the Decision Time broadcast on Iran became a piece of propaganda for the British/US political establishment and for action by Western powers against Iran.

MWAW has registered a complaint with the BBC.

Campaign Iran has also complained: click here for details.

Dan Plesch writes: The evidence is building up that President Bush plans to add war on Iran to his triumphs in Iraq and Afghanistan – and there is every sign, to judge by his extraordinary warmongering speech in Plymouth on Friday, that Tony Blair would be keen to join him if he were still in a position to commit British forces to the field.

“There’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way,” said NBC TV’s Tim Russert after meeting the president. This is borne out by the fact that Bush has sent forces to the Gulf that are irrelevant to fighting the Iraqi insurgents. These include Patriot anti-missile missiles, an aircraft carrier, and cruise-missile-firing ships.

Many military analysts see these deployments as signals of impending war with Iran. The Patriot missiles are intended to shoot down Iranian missiles. The naval forces, including British ships, train to pre-empt Iranian interference with oil shipments through the straits of Hormuz.

Having been given so much advice on what to do in Iraq – most notably by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group – the president went with the recommendations of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). So much for the idea that the Iraq debacle marginalised the neocons.

The political context as seen from inside the White House and Downing Street is that we are in a war as serious as the second world war. John Bolton exemplified this outlook when he compared US problems in Iraq with the fighting with Japan after Pearl Harbour.

Donald Rumsfeld and the AEI have developed a strategy for regime change in Iran that does not involve a ground invasion. Weapons of mass destruction will provide the rationale for military action, though it won’t be limited to attacks on a few weapons factories. It will include limiting Iranian retaliatory capability, using bombers to destroy up to 10,000 targets in the first day of any war, and special forces flying in to destroy anything that’s left.

In the aftermath, the US will support regime change, hoping to replace the ayatollahs with an Iran of the regions. The US and British governments now support a coalition of groups seeking a federal Iran. This may be another neocon delusion, but that may not be the point. Making Tehran concentrate on internal problems leaves it unable to act elsewhere.

Bush has said he will destroy the Syrian and Iranian networks in Iraq. These may include Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, but are also likely to target the Iranian-created Badr brigades, now wearing Iraqi police uniforms. In the south, the withdrawal of British troops to Basra airport looks more like a preparation to avoid a Shia backlash than a handover to the government of Iraq.

The US director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, explained that the threat to launch Hizbullah against Israel was the main deterrent to a US attack on Iran. Although politically Hizbullah scored a major victory in holding off the Israeli army last summer, in fact it was badly damaged.

The Iranian regime seems prepared for confrontation, perhaps confident Washington is bluffing. Next month Iran celebrates its completion of the nuclear-fuel cycle, in defiance of UN sanctions. Expect Bush and Blair to ask what the world will do to prevent a new Holocaust against the Jews. In his Plymouth speech, Blair told us that we could not pick and choose our wars. He may have been telling us more than we realised.
Dan Plesch is a research associate at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, School of Oriental and African Studies

From The Independent, Jan 13: Tony Blair has turned the blame for his disastrous military campaigns in the Middle East on anti-war dissidents and the media.
Warning it would take the West another 20 years to defeat Islamic terrorism, the Prime Minister used a wide-ranging “swansong” lecture on defence to denounce critics and the media who have been a thorn in his side since the invasion of Iraq.
He also dismissed those – including many defence chiefs – who
claimed the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath had fuelled insurgents and terrorism.
The Prime Minister rejected as “ludicrous” the notion that removing two dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq and replacing them with a UN-backed process to democracy had made Britain a greater target for international terrorism.
However, Mr Blair’s speech last night provoked widespread criticism from MPs and military chiefs.
Speaking to an invited audience of military commanders and academics on board a warship in Plymouth, the Prime Minister disclosed his fears that the West no longer had the stomach for sustained military campaigns. He also appeared to blame the media for the global outrage provoked by the war in Iraq.
“[Islamic terrorists] have realised two things: the power of
terrorism to cause chaos, hinder and displace political progress especially through suicide missions; and the reluctance of Western opinion to countenance long campaigns, especially when the account it receives is via a modern media driven by the impact of pictures.
“They now know that if a suicide bomber kills 100 completely innocent people in Baghdad, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of Iraqis who voted for a non-sectarian government, then the image presented to a Western public is as likely to be, more likely to be, one of a failed Western policy, not another outrage against democracy.”
Acknowledging the public backlash against the Iraq war, Mr Blair said: “Public opinion will be divided, feel that the cost is too great, the campaign too long, and be unnerved by the absence of ‘victory’ in the normal way they would reckon it.
But the Prime Minister added: “They will be constantly bombarded by the propaganda of the enemy, often quite sympathetically treated by their own media, to the effect that it’s really all ‘our’, that is the West’s fault. That, in turn, impacts on the feelings of our armed forces. They want public opinion not just behind them but behind their mission.”
He warned that the terrorists had learnt how to use the media to undermine public opinion. He cited a website, called LiveLeak, showing “gruesome images” of the “reality of war” as the kind of propaganda weapon that was being used by international terrorism.
The Prime Minister’s targets also appeared to include military chiefs, such as the former head of the army, General Sir Mike Jackson, who have criticised the Government for failing to look after the soldiers.
“The military and especially their families will feel they are being asked to take on a task of a different magnitude and nature. Any grievances, any issues to do with military life, will be more raw, more sensitive, more prone to cause resentment,” he said.
Mr Blair seemed desperate to provide a lasting justification of his support for the US in the “war on terror”. The Prime Minister had wanted to use his lecture to start a debate on the future of Britain and its military strength, on “tough” and “soft” defence. Some countries had retreated to peacekeeping while Britain maintained a force to fight wars. “We must do both,” he said.
Seeking to stiffen the resolve of the West, he said: “Terrorism cannot be defeated by military means alone but it can’t be defeated without it.” He added: “The parody of people in my position is of leaders who, gung-ho, launch their nations into ill-advised adventures without a thought for the consequences. The reality is we are those charged with making decisions in this new and highly uncertain world; trying, as best we can, to make the right decision. That’s not to say we do so but that is our motivation.”
Mr Blair was accused of “delusional ramblings” by John McDonnell, leader of the left-wing Campaign Group of Labour MPs. Alan Simpson, a leading Labour anti-war MP said: “Tony Blair is whingeing about the hundreds of thousands of people like me who opposed the war on Iraq. He totally fails to realise that soldiers and their families blame him for the reckless way he launched an illegal war with no coherent exit strategy.”
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, who also opposed the war, said: “The Prime Minister does not seem to have learnt the lessons of Iraq. Without United Nations authority the military action was illegal and severely damaged Britain’s reputation. This will be the Prime Minister’s legacy.”
Air Marshal Sir John Walker, former head of defence intelligence and deputy chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said: “This is politics, not morality. The only reason Mr Blair is saying this now is because he cannot airbrush Iraq out of the news. He is talking about renewing the covenant with the armed forces because they are the ones having to bear the fallout from his mistakes.”
His attack on the media was “particularly rich coming from a party which made a such a fetish out of spin,” added Sir John.
The shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said: “This is yet another episode of ‘Ten Wasted Years’, by Tony Blair. His legacy will be an overstretched army, navy and air force.
“Our servicemen and women want to know what Tony Blair is going to do about the failure to deliver armoured vehicles to protect troops from roadside bombs in Iraq. They want to know when they will have enough helicopters in Afghanistan and when the Hercules transport fleet will get proper protection.”
Tony Blair’s spin unspun

* BLAIR SAYS: “The parody of people in my position is of leaders who, gung-ho, launch their nations into ill-advised adventures without a thought for the consequences.”
ANALYSIS: No amount of lectures will erase the fact that Iraq is now a mess because of the failure to plan for the peace after Saddam was toppled, and it has made Iran the dominant force in the region.
* BLAIR SAYS: “Public opinion … will be constantly bombarded by the propaganda of the enemy … to the effect that it’s really all “our”, that is the West’s, fault.”
ANALYSIS: Mr Blair is losing the propaganda war over Iraq, but blaming the media for covering the reporting of the horror of daily life in Baghdad is a sign of his desperation.
* BLAIR SAYS: “The risk here – and in the US where the future danger is one of isolationism not adventurism – is that the politicians decide it’s all too difficult and default to an unstated, passive disengagement, that doing the right thing slips almost unconsciously into doing the easy thing.”
ANALYSIS: Mr Blair appears worried that after handing over power to Gordon Brown, his successor may come under pressure to do the “easy thing” and bring the troops home before the ‘job is done’.
* BLAIR SAYS: “The extraordinary job that servicemen do needs to be reflected in the quality of accommodation provided for them and their families, at home or abroad. So much of what is written distorts the truth.”
ANALYSIS: Mr Blair is clearly irritated not only at the media but also at defence chiefs for criticisms of the “overstretch” of the armed forces.
* BLAIR SAYS: “September 11 wasn’t the incredible action of an isolated group. It was the product rather of a worldwide movement, with an ideology based on a misreading of Islam.”
ANALYSIS: Mr Blair still linked September 11 with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But there is no evidence that Iraq was used as a training ground for terrorism. It is now.

Craig Murray writes: Google “Rashid Rauf – mastermind”. On the first page of results you will find CBS, the BBC, the Times, Guardian and Mail all describing Rauf last summer, on security service or police briefing, as the “Mastermind” behind the “Liquid terror bomb plot”. So the fact that a Pakistani court has found there is no evidence of terrorism against him cannot be lightly dismissed by the cheerleaders of the plot story.

Rashid Rauf still faces other charges, including forgery, and what is touted as possession of explosives, although what he actually possessed was hydrogen peroxide, which is not explosive. As hydrogen peroxide is readily obtainable without limitation from any chemist or hardware store in the UK, why you would source it in Pakistan to blow up jets in Britain was never very convincing. The Pakistani court perhaps felt so too.

Rashid Rauf has much to answer. He is still wanted in the UK over the murder of his uncle some years ago – a crime which, like the alleged forgery, had no apparent terrorist link. None of which adds to the credibility of the evidence he allegedly gave the Pakistani intelligence services about the liquid bomb plot in the UK.

A second and simultaneous development is even more compelling evidence that this massive scare was, as I said at the time, “More propaganda than plot”. Thames Valley police have given up after five months scouring the woods near High Wycombe where the bomb materials were allegedly hidden. They told the Home Office on 12 December that they would only continue if the government were prepared to meet the costs; they wished to get back to devoting their resources to real crimes, like armed robbery and burglary.

Remember this was a plot described by the authorities as “Mass murder on an unimaginable scale” and “Bigger than 9/11″. There have been instances in the UK of hundreds of police officers deployed for years to find an individual murderer. If the police really believed they were dealing with an effort at “Mass murder on an unimaginable scale”, would they be calling off the search after five months? No.

Which brings us to the lies that have been told – one of which concerns this search. An anonymous police source tipped off the media early on that they had discovered a “Suitcase” containing “bomb-making materials”. This has recently been described to me by a security service source as “A lot of rubbish from someone’s garage dumped in the woods”. You could indeed cannibalise bits of old wire, clocks and car parts to form part of a bomb – perhaps you could enclose it in the old suitcase. But have they found stuff that is exclusively concerned with causing explosions, like detonators, explosives or those famous liquid chemicals? No, they haven’t found any.

Wycombe Woods, like the sands of Iraq, have failed to yield up the advertised WMD.

The other “evidence” that the police announced they had found consisted of wills (with the implication they were made by suicide bombers) and a map of Afghanistan. It turns out that the wills were made in the early 90s by volunteers going off to fight the Serbs in Bosnia – they had been left with the now deceased uncle of one of those arrested. The map of Afghanistan had been copied out by an eleven year old boy. All of which is well known to the UK media, but none of which has been reported for fear of prejudicing the trial. I am at a complete loss to understand why it does not prejudice the trial for police to announce in a blaze of worldwide front page publicity that they have found bomb-making materials, wills and maps. Only if you contradict the police is that prejudicial. Can anyone explain why?

While the arrest of 26 people in connection with the plot was also massively publicised, the gradual release of many of them has again gone virtually unreported. For example on 31 October a judge released two brothers from Chingford commenting that the police had produced no credible evidence against them. Charges against others have been downgraded, so that those now accused of plotting to commit explosions are less than the ten planes the police claimed they planned to blow up in suicide attacks.

Five British newspapers had to pay damages to a Birmingham man they accused, on security service briefing, of being part of the plot. Only the Guardian had the grace to publish the fact and print a retraction.

A final fact to ponder. Despite naming him as the “mastermind” behind somethng “bigger than 9/11″, the British government made no attempt to extradite Rashid Rauf on charges of terrorism. That is not difficult to do – the Pakistani authorities have handed over scores of terrorist suspects to the US, many into the extraordinary rendition process, and on average the procedure is astonishingly quick – less than a week and they are out of the country. But the British security services, who placed so much weight on intelligence from Rashid Rauf, were extraordinarily coy about getting him here where his evidence could be properly scrutinised by a British court. However MI5 were greatly embarassed by Birmingham police, who insisted on pointing out that Rauf was wanted in the UK over the alleged murder of his uncle in Birmingham. Now he was in custody in Pakistan, shouldn’t we extradite him? So eventually an extradition request over that murder was formally submitted – but not pursued with real energy or effort. There remains no sign that we will see Rauf in the UK.

I still do not rule out that there was a germ of a terror plot at the heart of this investigation. We can speculate about agents provocateurs and security service penetration, both British and Pakistani, but still there might have been genuine terrorists involved. But the incredible disruption to the travelling public, the War on Shampoo, and the “Bigger than 9/11″ hype is unravelling.

You won’t read that in the newspapers.

Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily write: The U.S. administration continues to tout Iraq as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East, but press freedom in Iraq has plummeted since the beginning of the occupation.
Repression of free speech in Iraq was extreme already under the regime of Saddam Hussein. The 2002 press freedom index of the watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq a dismal130th. The 2006 index pushes Iraq down to 154th position in a total of 168 listed countries, though still ahead of Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, China and Iran. North Korea is at the bottom of the table.
The index ranks countries by how they treat their media, looking at the number of journalists who were murdered, threatened, had to flee or were jailed by the state.
The end of Saddam’s dictatorship had for a while brought hope of greater press freedom. More than 200 new newspapers and a dozen television channels opened. The hope did not last even weeks.
“We were overwhelmed by the change that accompanied what we thought was the liberation of our country,” journalist Said Ali who had earlier been arrested many times for criticising Saddam’s regime told IPS. “I was arrested then for criticising low-ranking officials, and that was why I did not stay in jail long. The change of system in 2003 brought me hope of a better situation, but it proved false.”
First, journalists began to face the danger of getting shot in the streets by nervous U.S. soldiers. Many journalists were killed in such firing. Later they began to face exile, arrest and bans on reporting after they began to expose abuses against Iraqi civilians. Journalists were targeted also for reporting the growing resistance to the occupation.
Order 65 of the “100 Orders” penned by former U.S. administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer established a communications and media commission. Under the order passed Mar. 20, 2004 the commission had complete control over licensing and regulating telecommunications, broadcasting, information services and all other media establishments.
On Jun. 28, 2004 when the United States supposedly handed power to a “sovereign” interim government, Bremer simply passed on the authority to U.S.-installed interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, who had longstanding ties with the CIA and the British intelligence service MI6. These orders have since been incorporated into the Iraqi constitution.
Within days of the “handover” of power to the interim Iraqi government, security forces raided and shut down the Baghdad office of al-Jazeera Arabic satellite channel.
The network was banned from reporting out of Iraq initially for a month, but the ban was then extended “indefinitely”, and remains in place today. In November 2004 the Iraqi government announced that any al-Jazeera journalist found reporting in Iraq would be detained.
Others were picked on too. “My friend Sophie-Anne Lamouf, a French journalist who was covering Fallujah events from her hotel in Baghdad was exiled,” an Iraqi journalist told IPS. “I could not believe going back to the dark ages was possible, but it is true.”
Other journalists say resistance groups and criminal gangs are the biggest threat today. Another threat to media workers has been abduction either for ransom or to draw international attention to the kidnappers’ cause.
“The worst thing that happens to a journalist in Iraq is the fighters’ opinion that some of us are CIA spies,” Iraqi journalist Maki al-Nazzal told IPS. “This would definitely lead to thorough investigations and sometimes has led to death.”
During the siege of Fallujah in April 2004, 12 foreign journalists reported freely and left safely. But the situation changed soon afterwards. Under truce negotiations during that siege, U.S. forces asked leaders of the city to expel al-Jazeera journalists as part of a cease-fire agreement.
In September this year, the Iraqi government shut down the Baghdad bureau of al-Jazeera’s competitor al-Arabiya. And on Jan. 1 this year, the Baghdad office of al-Sharqiya satellite channel which broadcasts from Dubai was ordered closed by the Iraqi government on grounds of “inciting sectarianism” following the Dec. 30 execution of Saddam Hussein. A news reader had appeared wearing black mourning clothes.
All non-Iraqi journalists now base themselves in well-protected hotels. For fear of resistance fighters, criminal gangs, the U.S. military or death squads, most never leave the hotels. When they do, they go “embedded” with the U.S. military.
According to the U.S. based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 92 journalists and 37 media support workers have been killed in Iraq since the occupation began in March 2003. Reporters Without Borders says at least 94 journalists and 45 media assistants have been killed since then.
Among the dead was IPS journalist Alaa Hassan who was shot and killed by armed men as he drove to work Jun. 28 this year.
Reporters Without Borders added that Iraq was one of the world’s worst marketplaces for hostages, with at least 38 journalists kidnapped in three years.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 14 journalists have been killed by the U.S. military. Many Arab media organisations say that number is far higher.
Death squads are now another growing threat to the media. The al-Shaabiya satellite channel bureau was attacked by death squads last year. The company chairman and many members of the staff were killed.
(Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside Iraq and has been covering the Middle East for several years.)

John Pilger writes: On 14 November, Bridget Ash wrote to the BBC’s Today programme asking why the invasion of Iraq was described merely as “a conflict”. She could not recall other bloody invasions reduced to “a conflict”. She received this reply:

Dear Bridget You may well disagree, but I think there’s a big difference between the aggressive “invasions” of dictators like Hitler and Saddam and the “occupation”, however badly planned and executed, of a country for positive ends, as in the Coalition effort in Iraq. Yours faithfully, Roger Hermiston Assistant Editor, Today

In demonstrating how censorship works in free societies and the double standard that props up the facade of “objectivity” and “impartiality”, Roger Hermiston’s polite profanity offers a valuable exhibit. An invasion is not an invasion if “we” do it, regardless of the lies that justified it and the contempt shown for international law. An occupation is not an occupation if “we” run it, no matter that the means to our “positive ends” require the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and an unnecessary sectarian tragedy.

Those who euphemise these crimes are those Arthur Miller had in mind when he wrote: “The thought that the state . . . is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.” Miller might have been less charitable had he referred directly to those whose job it was to keep the record straight.

The ubiquity of Hermiston’s view was illuminated the day before Bridget Ash wrote her letter. Buried at the bottom of page seven in the Guardian’s media section was a report on an unprecedented study by the universities of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds on the reporting leading up to and during the invasion of Iraq. This concluded that more than 80 per cent of the media unerringly followed “the government line” and less than 12 per cent challenged it. This unusual, and revealing, research is in the tradition of Daniel Hallin at the University of California, whose pioneering work on the reporting of Vietnam, The Uncensored War, saw off the myth that the supposedly liberal American media had undermined the war effort.

This myth became the justification for the modern era of government “spin” and the “embedding” (control) of journalists. Devised by the Pentagon, it was enthusiastically adopted by the Blair government. What Hallin showed – and was pretty clear at the time in Vietnam, I must say – was that while “liberal” media organisations such as the New York Times and CBS Television were critical of the war’s tactics and “mistakes”, even exposing a few of its atrocities, they rarely challenged its positive motives – precisely Roger Hermiston’s position on Iraq.

Language was, and is, crucial. The equivalent of the BBC’s sanitised language in Iraq today is little different from America’s “noble cause” in Vietnam, which was followed by the “tragedy” of America’s “quagmire” – when the real tragedy was suffered by the Vietnamese. The word “invasion” was effectively banned. What has changed? Well, “collateral damage”, the obscene euphemism invented in Vietnam for the killing of civilians, no longer requires quotation marks in a Guardian editorial.

What is refreshing about the new British study is its understanding of the corporate media’s belief in and protection of the benign reputation of western governments and their “positive motives” in Iraq, regardless of the demonstrable truth. Piers Robinson from the University of Manchester, who led the research team, says that the “humanitarian rationale” became the main justification for the invasion of Iraq and was echoed by journalists. “This is the new ideological imperative shaping the limits of the media,” he says. “And the Blair government has been very effective at promoting it among liberal internationalists in the media.” It was the 1999 Kosovo campaign, promoted by Blair and duly echoed as a “humanitarian intervention”, that set the limits for modern invasion journalism.

The Kosovo adventure has long been exposed as a fraud that ridicules warnings of a “new genocide like the Holocaust”, though little of this has been reported. It as if our long trail of blood is forever invisible, intellectually and morally. Certainly, it is time those who run media colleges began to alert future journalists to their insidious grooming.

Media Workers Against the War is a group of concerned journalists and media staff who campaign against the “war on terror” and against the racism directed against Muslims in consequence of the war.

Set up by campaigning journalists John Pilger and Paul Foot in 1990 to campaign against the first Gulf War, Media Workers Against the War believes British and US troops are making the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan worse and should leave immediately.

Media Workers Against the War believes that much mainstream media coverage of the war on terror adopts the “common sense” assumptions of the British and American governments, fails to subject those assumptions to critical examination, and consistently underplays and under-reports the anti-war movement — the largest radical protest movement this country has ever seen.