Posted on 10/20/2002 9:17:28 AM PDT by VaMarVet
LONDON, 20 October — The BBC correspondent who "liberated Kabul", John Simpson, has attacked "gonzo" journalists who are cheerleading the world to war.
Simpson, the veteran world affairs editor of the BBC, who was smuggled into Afghanistan in an extra large burka and admitted he "got a bit carried away" when he strode into Kabul ahead of Northern Alliance fighters, was withering in his criticism of US news networks.
He reserved most of his derision for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, which has now overtaken CNN in the United States, and its star reporter, Geraldo Rivera, the man it bills as "the world’s greatest war correspondent".
Fox News was "dysfunctional, grotesquely patriotic and embarrassing" and had misled the American public after Sept. 11 with "hysterical, excitable reporting", he told an audience at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, England, where he was reading from his new book, News From No Man’s Land.
Rivera, he said, had turned up late in Kabul with a pair of pearl-handled pistols boasting that he wanted to bring home the head of Osama Bin Laden "and bronze it". "He pulled out these pistols and waved them in the air," he said. "I have my problems with CNN and I sometimes have my problems with the BBC, but I can’t remember seeing anyone doing that before in a live broadcast."
The result was the US public had been horribly misinformed, he said. "I went to Ground Zero and I found that many people believed US immigration policy was the reason why America was so disliked. Thank God I don’t have to broadcast to them. There is no recognition of linkage with America’s support for Israel. There is a great hunger for information in America which people are just not getting."
"It was a lot of nonsense that Islam and the West are locked in eternal conflict. It’s purely politics and local politics often at that. Osama Bin Laden is primarily motivated by wanting to remove American bases from Saudi Arabia and by the Palestinian problem. It is as small as that," he said.
Simpson said Saddam Hussein was a regular, "irritable viewer" of his World TV program on BBC World despite the fact that his deputy, Tareq Aziz, once threatened to "liquidate me if I asked another question...My information is that the main oilfields are already mined, ready for exploding...In 1991, I thought it was just a question of getting down to the war and the Iraqis will collapse, which is indeed what happened. This time I don’t think it is going to be quite that easy."
He said George Bush was a man of below average intelligence and a "glove puppet of his vice president, Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld".
In a passionate defense of BBC World he said it should be funded by the state "given its huge importance in terms of Britain’s standing in the world". He said it was wrong that, given its average audience of a quarter of a billion people, it had to survive on a shoestring budget and was not shown in Britain. (The Guardian).
We've had feeding tubes crammed into our brains for decades by our media about that issue, to no avail. We discount it. Occupied Israel had been liberated by its natives. It's their Holy Land. The Israelis want to live and let live. We don't buy Islamic BS. Now that Islamic extremists killed US citizens by the thousands, the LAST thing we want to do is let them win.
Well said, and it is even more foolish to make the same stupid mistakes repeatedly against the U.S. History has a way of repeating itself and even a casual examination of the past...
Who the heck was he talking to? The link between America, Israel and world opinion has been well reported, especially on Fox News (who he criticizes).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.