Iraq

When Saddam hanged a British journalist in 1990, MI5 had the journalist smeared in the Sun, and the Mail agreed he was a spy. What did Blair say? John Pilger can find nothing.

“A painful decision,” say the supporters of an invasion. But it is not they who will feel the pain: it will be the Iraqi infants writhing in the dust when the cluster bombs fall.

They have blown off the limbs of women and the scalps of children. Their victims overwhelm the morgues and flood into hospitals that lack even aspirin.

A man cuddles the body of his infant daughter; her blood drenches them. A woman in black pursues a tank, her arms outstretched; all seven in her family are dead. An American Marine murders a woman because she happens to be standing next to a man in a uniform. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but the chick got in the way.”

“We had a great day,” said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines last Saturday. “We killed a lot of people.”

The official version is that Britain’s foreign policy is basically benevolent: that it promotes democracy, peace and human rights. The truth is that Britain supports terrorism.

Something deeply corrupt is consuming journalism. A war so one-sided it was hardly a war was reported like a Formula One race, as the teams sped to the chequered flag in Baghdad.

The unthinkable is becoming normal. The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war and we should not forget its true horror.

In his latest article for the Daily Mirror, John Pilger argues that the “high crime” of the invasion of Iraq that “will not melt away” and says the catalogue of Tony Blair’s deceptions are now being revealed by the day, unravelling any credibility left.

The White House sets the tone and the media echo a line that celebrates the victimhood of the invader and the evil of the Iraqis. And then London takes its cue.