The BBC's failure to tell the whole truth about the recent executions in Iraq

This weekly series, by Joseph Loconte, is devoted to critiquing—from the perspective of an American journalist living in London—the reporting and commentary by the BBC on political and cultural issues important to Britons and Americans.  Joseph Loconte is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and a commentator on religion for National Public Radio. His most recent book is The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm.

Let’s start with the BBC’s weekend coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein’s tag-team merchants of death, Barzan al-Takriti and Awad Hamad al-Bandar. The report notes in passing that Tikriti led Saddam’s secret police, the Mukhabarat, and that Bandar was a top judge in the Ba’thist regime. Here’s the opening paragraph announcing the event to the BBC’s millions of readers and listeners worldwide: “Two of Saddam Hussein’s key aides have been hanged in Baghdad, two weeks after the chaotic execution of the former Iraqi president.” Now note the sentence immediately following: “Officials stressed this time there had been ‘no violations,’ but Saddam Hussein’s half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, was decapitated as he hung.”

You get the point. The brief report, like the bulk of the BBC’s news coverage of this event, focused on the manner of these latest executions—apparently what its editors and reporters found most offensive. Yet, in their blinkered moral vision, they mostly ignored the macabre wickedness that both men meted out upon the Iraqi people.

We learned virtually nothing of the fearsome and deadly reach of Takriti’s Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service—a vast cadre of jack-booted thugs, any one of whom would make Orwell’s Big Brother look like a doting nanny. If the BBC had a more honest sense of its civic responsibilities, it would have reminded us of some of the Mukhabarat’s many methods for enforcing Saddam’s reign of terror. You can read about these activities in an excellent September 2002 report by scholar Ibrahim al-Marashi in The Middle East Review of International Affairs. They included: 1) monitoring (i.e., spying on, infiltrating) all grass-roots organizations 2) suppressing (i.e., arresting and/or assassinating) leaders of Shi’a, Kurdish and other opposition groups 3) maintaining a massive network of informants 4) targeting for arrest or assassination any individual considered threatening to the regime 5) conducting sabotage, subversion and terrorist operations abroad and 6) murdering opposition elements outside Iraq. This was the same Mukhabarat that tried to assassinate President George H.W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait in 1993.

The cumulative effect of Tikriti’s secret police, in tandem with Bandar’s Sunni-style Inquisition, was the creation of a culture of fear, despair, betrayal and death. More than 20 million Iraqis lived in the darkness of this despotism. Tens of thousands of ordinary Iraqis surely perished because of it. I once met several survivors of Saddam’s crimes against humanity during their trip to Washington, D.C. They were numbered among the disloyal and their arms had been amputated. Yet they were bearing witness—a quiet, dreadful witness to Saddam’s institutionalized barbarism.

Nevertheless, the BBC couldn’t find the time, or the moral courage, to tell us much about these facts. Its strenuous opposition to the Iraq war, it seems, makes these facts too inconvenient to dwell upon.

It all reminds me of a warning by Henry Van Dusen, a colleague of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, leveled against liberal churchmen who closed their eyes to Nazi brutalities to justify their pacifism and isolationism. “What is at stake here is not simply a deficiency of information…It is resolute unwillingness to face known and indisputable facts. And that unwillingness leads on to the radical falsification of issues and the gross misleading of those who do not have access to the facts,” Van Dusen wrote. He called this a posture of escapism—a flight from responsibility. “In one charged with influence over the views and decisions of others in days like these, it is unforgivable.”

Joe Loconte also presents the Britain And America show on 18 Doughty Street Talk TV.  Watch the most recent edition here and its 30 minute discussion of presidential tickets.

Comments

[TomTom]

UPDATE: I don't know who is translating for CNN but again, like the Times with the execution video last week, they got most of the conversation in the video wrong. Here is the transcript they posted in their story:

Man 1: "Quickly, quickly please, take one picture."

Man 2: "Yes, I hear you."

Man 1 (raising his voice when the video continues longer than a still shot would have required): "Come on, what's the matter?"

Man 2: "I hear you, I hear you."

Man 1 (to a third man): "Abu Ali, come on and deal with this."

Man 1 (apparently irritated over the length of time Man 2 is taking): "Come on, habibi ... I'll say this one time politely otherwise I'm going to get real angry."

Man 2: "I hear you."

Here is what was actually said in the video:

Man 1: "Quickly, quickly. I'm going to count from one to four. One ... Two ... Ha, Abu Ali. Come on, habibi. Just a moment. Mercy be on your family -"

Man 2: "I'm coming."

Man 1: " ... You're going to bring us a disaster ..."

Man 2: "I'm coming. I'm coming."

Man 1: "Just a moment. One moment. Abu Ali ... "

Man 2: "I'm coming."

Man 1: " ... Abu Ali, you take care of this. Abu Ali."

Abu Ali: "Come on. Come on."

Man 1: "Ya habibi, ya aini (my dear) ... "

Man 2: "That's it. I'm coming."

There's not that much of a difference in meaning, but there was no mention of taking one picture or a guy threatening to get angry. It just looked like they were afraid to get caught.

My whole point is that whoever is translating for CNN and the NY Times is not doing a great job.

# posted by Zeyad : 1/08/2007 03:20:00 PM

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/

[dougf]

Could not agree more with your analysis of the BBC 'coverage'.

I don't seem to recall the same 'outrage' being expressed whenever Iran uses a crane to slowly strangle one of it's 'criminals', even when that 'criminal' happens to be a young girl.

But I probably just missed it. I'm careless that way.

The BBC is exactly the kind of 'news' a decaying civilization deserves. Ain't it grand.

[Andrew]

Uh, of course that article doesn't go into his background - it was current news about an execution and its quite possibly dangerous political effects, not a history lesson.

For that, you click on the link on the right labelled obituary, which starts:

"Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's half-brother, was the former head of Iraq's notorious secret police.
Known as the Mukhabarat, the intelligence organisation was believed to have tortured and murdered thousands of opponents of the regime.

The Baath party official was taken into custody by US forces in April 2003. At the time, he was described as a presidential adviser with in-depth knowledge of the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Barzan was a leading figure in the Mukhabarat from the 1970s, later taking over as director. A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity at the time of his capture, said that during his time in the secret police, Barzan had played a key role in the Iraqi regime's execution of opponents at home and assassinations abroad.

The US official said that Barzan was also known for his ruthlessness and brutality in purging the Iraqi military of anyone seen as disloyal."

[Will East]

Andrew - I agree. I think there's another point to make too. If these men had been imprisoned for life rather than executed, then all the reports would have focused on their oppressive actions. Instead we are all focusing on the 'event' of their killing. While Joseph is trying to shift the focus of attention away from this, in the end he is merely contributing to the debate.

I don't support the executions myself for two reasons. Firstly, Saddam's execution gave him an opportunity for one last act of defiance and so he goes down as a martyr. Better to let him live a solitary life in prison, with four blank walls to look at for the rest of his days. Second, the way the executions have been conducted has destroyed the dignity of justice and any sense that the Iraqi authorities themselves are beyond reproach. The lasting impression of Saddam's execution will be the baying crowd, shouting and cat-calling as though they were at a rowdy public execution centuries ago. OK, the BBC may not have provided a balanced report and the rest of the media hasn't covered itself in glory either, but how on earth was this made a possibility in the first place?

[dish]

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