Iraq: British officer's email
Newsnight 6 Jun 07, 10:06 PM Newsnight received the following email from a serving British Army captain with experience in various theatres including Iraq. We know his identity but have withheld it at his request. Watch Mark Urban's report on morale among soldiers serving in Iraq here.

"I am a serving British Army officer with operational experience in a number of theatres. I am concerned regarding the effect of your recent reports from Baghdad (Watch Mark’s report here). I have been forwarded the correspondence between yourself and David Edwards of medialens.org, and would like to highlight that it is not merely medialens users, who are concerned about embedded coverage with the US Army. The intentions and continuing effects of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq have been questioned by too few people in the mainstream media and political parties, primarily only the Guardian and Independent, and the Liberal Democrats, respectively.

There is a widespread, and well-sourced, belief based on both experience and evidence, in both the British military and academia, that the US is not "just in Iraq to keep the peace, regardless of what the troops on the ground believe. It is in Iraq to establish a client state amenable to the requirements of US realpolitik in a key, oil-rich region. To doubt this is to be ignorant of the motives that have guided US foreign policy in the post-war period and a mountain of evidence since 2003." (quote from medialens)

That the invasion was 'illegal, immoral and unwinnable', and the 'greatest foreign policy blunder since Suez' - to paraphrase the Liberal Democrats - is the overwhelming feeling of many of my peers, and they speak of loathsome six-month tours, during which they led patrols with dread and fear, reluctantly providing target practice for insurgents, senselessly haemorrhaging casualties, and squandering soldiers' lives, as part of Bush's vain attempt to delay the inevitable Anglo-US rout until after the next US election. Given a free choice most of us would never have invaded Iraq, and certainly would have withdrawn long ago. Hopefully, Tony Blairs's handover to Gordon Brown will herald a change of policy, and rapid withdrawal, but skewed pro-US coverage inhibits proper public debate, and is deeply unhealthy; lethally-so to many of us deployed to Iraq.

The [inadvertent] dangers of bias of embedded journalism are well known and there is a risk that the 'official line' can be conflated with evidence and facts. Jon Snow graphically demonstrated the effect of this during the initial invasion of Iraq in his programme The True Face of War. I am conscious that reporting independently, outside of the 'green zone' in Iraq is nigh on impossible, but I would merely request that the 'official line/White House propaganda' be handled with an appropriate degree of scepticism, and be caveated accordingly."

Comments Post your comment
1. At 11:00 PM on 06 Jun 2007, Andrew Houseley wrote:
There must now be a thorough re-appraisal of Britain's foreign and defence policies, of our role in the world, covering everything from the relationship with the United States to the need for a nuclear deterrant, to the conditions under which we commit our armed forces to potential flashpoints.
Britain's reputation among nations is shot through as a result of our tawdry adventure in Iraq.

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2. At 11:21 PM on 06 Jun 2007, Dr H Tabar wrote:
This letter fills me with pride for the courage of our soldiers and with utter shame for the cowardice of our mendacious politicians.

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3. At 11:24 PM on 06 Jun 2007, Simon wrote:
I find it all too predictable that Newsnight forgot to mention what seems to have prompted the officer to write to them with his personal views in the first place - namely an alert from Media Lens http://medialens.org/alerts/07/070522_the_surge_here.php which analysed Mark Urbans reporting from Iraq whilst he was embedded with the US army.

Media Lens subsequently published Mark Urbans response to their alert and then the officers email to Mark Urban (which had been copied to them) last friday
http://medialens.org/alerts/07/070601_illegal_immoral_unwinnable.php

It all makes for a very interesting discussion about the way the war in Iraq is presented to the public by the media. It's a shame that Newsnight missed the opportunity to engage their viewers in this discussion by choosing to focus solely on the armed forces (and then coming to no real conclusion about whether one email is representative of the whole army.)

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