Iraq and the press

The Iraq war differed from other recent conflicts in that its cassus belli needed to be sold to the public and the world at large. Whereas the need to go to war might be obvious on many occasions: an invasion, an unprovoked attack, a humanitarian crisis or an ethnic civil war. None of these applied. Not directly at least. Saddam Hussein's regime was considered a threat, he was in defiance of international law, and he was an unpleasant dictator who menaced his people and neighbours. So the argument goes. But this was a manufactured argument, rather than an argument based on an unacceptable situation. The relationship between the West and Iraq in March 2003 was essentially the same as it was in March 1991.

The threat justification was the hardest to prove. Firstly as threats like risks are perceived and the threshold for any threat will vary. The threat of WMD has been with us since the end of the second World War. Arguing that such a threat has worsened is not an easy task. Whilst Saddam had used and developed WMD in the past, it was unclear whether he retained this capacity. Secondly to justify war the Western powers would need to rely on intelligence gathered covertly from a mixture of unreliable and sparse sources. The intelligence agencies across Europe and the United States were convinced Iraq still possessed chemical, biological and nuclear capability or at least the ambition to develop. Clearly unable to provide open access to their sources, politicians had to present their evidence via the media in various dossiers, intelligence reports and press briefings. In the run up to war favourable media was used to present this case; sections of the media opposed to war scrutinised it.

Clearly from hindsight the evidence did not match the reality. But the public generally saw no reason to doubt the intelligence agencies who had been the vanguard of foreign policy for centuries. In an age of scepticism there were many who doubted the concrete nature of what was presented. Simile those opposed to war on humanitarian or anti-imperial grounds did not necessarily doubt that Saddam had WMD, but fiercely opposed the solution being set out by the Bush administration.

The good faith displayed by the media to the WMD argument proved to be finite. As it became obvious that the WMD did not exist, the media changed tack and sought to prove that politicians had spun, exaggerated or lied about the exact nature of what Iraq possessed. The war between the BBC and the government in June and July 2003 that led to the Hutton inquiry was the apex of this. Sections of the media who maintained a grudging acknowledgement that Blair was right and Saddam needed to go, reverted back to traditional positions. The Daily Mail, Telegraph and Times were critical of the way intelligence had been presented to the public, despite supporting the war. A hatred of new Labour, its ways and personnel superseded support for war.

The British media's focus on the September dossier and the semantics of Blair's statements on WMD have been an obsession, that has often baffled Iraqis. Pretty much since late May 2003 when the accusation of exaggerating intelligence emerged, large sections of the media have focused on this unremittingly. The questions about WMD and Blair's veracity provide a focal point for all opponents of the war to hone in on. The obsession to prove that Blair, Campbell and anyone else connected lied often seemed more important than what was actually happening in Iraq. Simile the debate over whether Iraq was in a state of civil war in 2006 formed part of a totemic struggle between the government and the media. To the government Iraq wasn't; to the media it was – thus vindicating their previous opposition.

The absence of Iraq experts in the mainstream media is also a criticism of how the war was reported. Prior to the war, Iraq's closed and secretive society meant that prior experience of Iraqi culture was rare. After the invasion and in the dangerous aftermath, those reporters who were new to Iraq would be unable to truly get to know the country. There would be no learning curve for new reporters. Either reporting would be from a distance within the Green zone or embedded with patrols. Actually meeting ordinary Iraqis would be far too dangerous for inexperienced journalists, as the risk of kidnap and death became widespread in the aftermath. A consequence for Western audiences is that reporting trends and patterns in Iraq, that long term experience could understand, was replaced with a focus on events – the spectacular insurgent attacks or American operations that regularly occurred.

Further to this, as the insurgency developed through 2004, its nuances were poorly reported. True the actual fabric of the insurgency was not fully understood by defence intelligence let alone journalists. But the American line that the violence was caused by outsiders whether in terms of personnel, finance or weapons was too easily passed. The Bush administration tried to link the war to its international war on terror, but the majority of the attacks on Coalition troops were from nationalist Sunni insurgents who were alienated by the American installed process and their heavy handed tactics. Likewise violence was often linked to the new political elite that America brought in from exile.