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Friday 16 March 2018

Sun Ultimate Iraq Hypocrisy

If you’re going to tell a lie, the saying goes, it might as well be a big one. And the lies do not come any bigger than the shameless editorial in this morning’s edition of the Super Soaraway Currant Bun, in which the Murdoch goons try to dump the blame for their own bosses’ folly by claiming that the fault for Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War lies solely with then Prime Minister Tony Blair. That’s not quite true, is it?
Maxine Shameless strikes again

The point of the rant is to try and persuade the paper’s dwindling readership to trust politicians (ho ho ho): “SCEPTICISM of politicians is healthy. But too many people, fuelled by social media, indulge in knee-jerk cynicism and baseless distrust which has become appallingly destructive”. But the Sun is less trusted than what people can read on social media. And their blame game is just laughable.

The fault originates with Tony Blair and his liar Alastair Campbell … Convinced they were doing God’s work, they cared nothing for truth. Their war in Iraq, with its hideous consequences, wounded our MPs’ reputations … The expenses scandal shredded what remained”. The Iraq war, in the retelling, is Blair’s, and his alone.

That will come as a surprise to many who recall that one Rupert Murdoch was in the vanguard of the call for war. As Roy Greenslade pointed out at the time, there were 175 Murdoch papers around the world in 2003, and by the most miraculous of coincidences, all 175 of them shilled unequivocally for the Iraq war. Every last one of them.

Rupe had his own agenda for backing war - he thought it would lead to cheaper oil: “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy … would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country … Once it [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else”.

The Sun, then under the less than benign editorship of Rebekah Wade, put out an articleinstructing readers to cut out and use the faces of those who opposed the Iraq war as a dartboard”. It told “You can aim your own missiles at the cowards and traitors who opted to support Saddam Hussein rather than the brave troops who laid down their lives for freedom … These are the people who wrongly told us that war would last months, the Iraqi people did not want it and many thousands of civilians and coalition soldiers would die”.

That article was later pulled. But a copy has been preserved. Heck, even Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, told the Leveson Inquiry “I’m not sure that the Blair government - or Tony Blair - would have been able to take the British people to war if it hadn’t been for the implacable support provided by the Murdoch papers. There’s no doubt that came from Mr Murdoch himself”. The Sun was so gung-ho, one of its feature writers resigned.
And why today’s calling of “liar” on Alastair Campbell? Well, perhaps this has something to do with it: “Rupert Murdoch joined in an ‘over-crude’ attempt by US Republicans to force Tony Blair to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war a week before a crucial House of Commons vote in 2003, according to the final volumes of Alastair Campbell's government diaries”. Sadly for the Sun, Big Al got that into print five years ago.

There has been no legal action since. And there won’t be. For the Murdoch press to drop cheerleading for the Iraq war on anyone else is beyond shameless.

3 comments:

foxytom said...

"Chirac est un Ver" screamed the headline...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/feb/21/pressandpublishing.Iraqandthemedia

Anonymous said...

Indeed it wasn't just Blair and Campbell. At the British end, it was virtually all the political and civil service establishment. Blair and Campbell couldn't have pulled it off alone. True, they were front men, but that's all they were......front men. Behind them was the whole New Labour gang, some of whom were willing naifs, some ignoramuses, and still others outright disgusting far right mass murderers who knew full well the whole thing was a rotten charade. Blair and Campbell simply took advantage of the situation, but so did his cabinet of sell outs. This enabled Blair to tell moron Bush2 "We're with you whatever."

Anyone who doubts this need only watch reruns of Bomber Benn's more recent tirade in the House that had a substantial number of far right cowardly nutjobs waving their order papers from all parts of the chamber, all screaming for more bombing in Syria. It was like a scene from the Reichstag circa 1938. Benn and the rest of the gang - disgusting creeps like Chuka Umunna - shame this country and its claim of democracy. We saw similar behaviour from New Labour after the MayBot's farcical lying "statement" on the Skripal affair.

The tories and their media are of course what they've always been and always will be: An organisation of suited up spivs and thieves who'd sell their own mothers in a coffin if it meant they could make an extra buck, preferably of US denomination deposited in an offshore gangster fund or in the rogue banker state of Switzerland.

Jonathan said...

Dodgy Dossiers anyone... Maybot and Bozza to fly to Trump ton Towers to egg on Donny boy for a war with Russia. Handy distraction from the catastrophic Brexit shambles.