History's faithless scribe (on Cold War accusations of American biowar)

The Australian ^ | 23rd December 2006 | Brendon O'Connor

[naturalman1975]

LAST year Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett's extended autobiography Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist was released, receiving generally favourable reviews from writer Ross Fitzgerald in The Australian and academic historian Stuart Macintyre in the online magazine New Matilda.

I have been interested in Burchett, who died in 1983, for some time and decided to do some research recently, while on a Fulbright fellowship in the US, into the most controversial aspect of his career: the role he played in spreading the claim that the US had dropped biological weapons – infected insects – on North Korea and China in 1951 and 1952 during the Korean War.

.....

Spreading claims that a nation used, in today's parlance, weapons of mass destruction is a very serious undertaking and, if falsely asserted, should surely vastly diminish one's credibility.

.....

Burchett seems to have talked to some of the pilots and helped translate and edit their ostensible confessions. Here the story takes its sorriest turn regarding Burchett.

If the supposed germ warfare was clearly a hoax as the evidence bears out, how were American airmen forced to confess to crimes they did not commit? Torture seems reasonable to presume.

.....

It is a shame that chroniclers of Burchett and his career have ignored this archival evidence, available now for several years. It seems those who have held him up as a brave hero have a vested interest in not examining evidence to the contrary.

.....

After examining Burchett's career in detail and adding this latest evidence, he emerges not as the true rebel journalist his followers claim him to be but a true propagandist, and a huge disappointment to journalists and historians alike.

[naturalman1975]

Best read with this that describes more of this traitors career.

[Rurudyne]

After examining Burchett's career in detail and adding this latest evidence, he emerges not as the true rebel journalist his followers claim him to be but a true propagandist, and a huge disappointment to journalists and historians alike.

This is a lesson that should be as old as Plato, rhetoric may be a poor tool to instill virtue but it is quite handy for indoctrinating the unsuspecting or disillusioned.

Even the unscrupulous way that Socrates used rhetoric––to accept Plato at face value––was far, far better than the brain rot that latter day socialist and progressives have been pushing.

But don't be too hasty to allow that any propagandist is a disappointment to any otherwise favorable class of people: or has everyone now decided to disregard Upton Sinclair––author of Boston––now that we know that he knew that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty?

[sidegunner]

He has another name from the 60's.."Wellfed Bulls#it", given to him real journalists from the same era.

[Rurudyne]

He has another name from the 60's.."Wellfed Bulls#it", given to him real journalists from the same era.

Now ... where's that LMAO smiley?