Wednesday 18 April 2018

BBC disrespect towards an Admiral of the Fleet

BBC Reporter Discourages Syria Questions Due To “Information War” With Russia
Caitlin Johnstone


17 April, 2018


BBC interview is making the rounds today among opponents of western interventionism in Syria. The subject of the interview, Admiral Alan West, voiced some much needed skepticism about the establishment narrative around the alleged gas attack in Douma. Everybody’s talking about it because West is an empire loyalist that nobody in their right mind would accuse of being an “Assad apologist” or “useful idiot of the Kremlin”, as anyone else who doesn’t swallow the official story hook, line and sinker is uniformly labeled.
West made some sensible comments about the White Helmets and the fact that Jaysh al-Islam had far more incentive to stage such an attack than Assad had to perpetrate it. Even more helpful was his personal account of having been aggressively pressured to make false reports about the success of the British bombing campaign in Bosnia, suggesting that those pressures can lead to bad intelligence and erroneous military responses.
I just wonder, you know we’ve had some bad experiences on intelligence,” West said. “When I was chief of defense intelligence, I had huge pressure put on me politically to try and say that our bombing campaign in Bosnia was achieving all sorts of things which it wasn’t. I was put under huge pressure, so I know the things that can happen with intelligence.”



So that’s a very significant addition to the dialogue. For me, though, the most interesting comments made in that interview came not from West, but from the BBC reporter who was interviewing him.

In the latter half of the interview, BBC’s Annita McVeigh asked the following questions after West’s comment about Bosnia:
We know that the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, or accused a western state on Friday, of perhaps fabricating evidence in Douma or somehow being involved in what happened in Douma. Given that we’re in an information war with Russia on so many fronts, do you think perhaps it’s inadvisable to be stating this so publicly given your position and your profile? Isn’t there a danger that you’re muddying the waters?”


1 comment:

  1. I am of the political left centre - so no axe to grind about this in any political sense ..but thank you for posting this. It clearly indicates there is a bias in the BBC. The interviewer did not clarify that Lord West's comment about 'Russians lie as a matter of policy' which resulted in blatant racism against all Russians being allowed to pass unchallenged. It is a clear breach of Section 2 of the OFCOM code. Added to the orchestrated attempts to take away the RT broadcasting licence since 2013, this amounts to the undermining of free speech. Yes, RT does present the 'Russian' side but no more than Beeb is biased to the western side. In a free society, most intelligent people understand that and can make up their own minds. Whatever our political beliefs and whether you are right or left wing, we should all uphold the freedom of speech that underpins our democracy. If you can spare a moment to do an Ofcom complaint please do so. Thank you.

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