[lbo-talk] Anglo vs. American news culture

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat May 31 01:39:41 PDT 2003


[Gotta love those newspaper headlines in the last paragraph. That's

what we're missing in this country.]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/919535.asp#BODY

Comments fuel doubts over Iraq's weapons

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

May 30 -- As the Pentagon sent hundreds of new weapons hunters into

Iraq and said it was changing how they would search for Saddam

Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, critics expressed shock at

published remarks by a senior U.S. official playing down those weapons

as the reason for the war in the first place.

<snip>

Critics of the war expressed shock at Wolfowitz's published

comments. "It leaves the world with one question: What should we

believe?" former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen told

The Associated Press.

In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the newspaper

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said the comments showed that the

United States was losing the battle for credibility. "The charge of

deception is inescapable," it said Friday.

In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin

Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war,

said he, too, doubted that Iraq had any such weapons.

"The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a

pre-emptive strike, `Hit Saddam before he hits us,'" Cook told the

British Broadcasting Corp. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not

have anything with which to hit us in the first place."

<snip>

BLAIR UNDER FIRE

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, was fighting his

own battle against allegations that he fabricated evidence against

Saddam after the BBC reported that an intelligence dossier had been

altered at the request of his office to make it "sexier" by claiming

that Saddam's weapons could be readied for use within 45 minutes.

<snip>

Blair's opponents seized on the latest report to blast the

prime minister. "I believe the prime minister lied to us and lied to

us and lied to us," said Tony Benn, a left-wing member of the Labor

Party. "The whole war was built upon falsehood, and I think the

long-term damage will be to democracy in Britain."

In Britain, newspaper headlines like "Sex it Up!" and "Lies,

Lies, Lies" piled the pressure on the government to prove that it did

not mislead Parliament or the public.

Full:

Linkname: Comments fuel doubts over Iraq's weapons

URL: http://www.msnbc.com/news/919535.asp#BODY



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