The BBC led their 10 O’clock News today with a five minute piece on the delay to the Chilcot report. It gave a retrospective on the Iraq War that did not mention, once, Weapons of Mass Destruction as the raison d’etre but told us the war “removed a brutal dictator”. They said the dead of the war were in thousands – not hundreds of thousands, not even tens of thousands. “Thousands died”, they said. Literally true, but diminishing the scale. They could equally have said dozens died, also literally true – just an awful lot of dozens.
Then they allowed Blair unanswered and unquestioned to speak sincerely to camera about how much he wanted the report published, and the reporter stated without challenge that Blair had not delayed publication and had not objected to the publication of his correspondence with President Bush – both statements which are a very long way from the whole truth.
Even by recent BBC standards, it was the most vomit inducing production. They compounded it by finishing with Ed Miliband in parliament demanding publication, when he has a shadow cabinet packed with the very criminals who launched the illegal war – a fact they did not note. Anti-war opinion was briefly represented by – Nick Clegg!!!
I do not recognise what the British state has become. Or rather I do recognise precisely what kind of state it has become, and it bears no relation to the democracy it claims to be.