“Our opponents in the main are Iraqi nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – jobs, money, security, hope. And the majority, therefore, I would suggest are not bad people.”
General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, speaking about the Iraqi resistance (via) during a recent speech at the Institute for International Studies (IISS) in London. Channel Four news showed a film of him making the remarks:
(via lenin)
When the head of the British Army describes the “majority” of the Iraqi resistance as “Iraqi nationalists” and “not bad people”, thereby totally deflating the official government narrative about the ‘insurgency’ being primarily composed of crazy al-Qaeda/takfiri fanatics, it’s surely big news.
However, whilst a search for ‘general richard dannatt’ on Google News brings up plenty of articles discussing his speech, a search for ‘general richard dannatt “not bad people”‘ produces but a single Guardian article, which buries the quote in a passing mention three paragraphs from the end.
It seems inconceivable that the mainstream press would report a speech so heavily and yet almost unanimously fail to mention one of its most important details, but it appears that this is what has happened. A Google search for ‘general richard dannatt “not bad people”‘ confirms this.
Who needs censorship when you have a press that is perfectly willing to ignore statements from a top military official in order to preserve the official government line all by itself?
Update: The transcript and video of Gen. Dannatt’s speech in full can be viewed here.
Filed under: Iraq, Media, News and politics, UK | 10 Comments
Tags: "free press", "not bad people", General Richard Dannatt, International & Foreign Policy, Iraq, Media, Quote of the Day, resistance, War
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For more info on the Iraqi resistance generally, I wrote a long post about it a while ago.
lenin’s “Iraqi Resistance Dossier” is an excellent resource on this.
You’d think it was centrally planned, but rather its something innate to editors, I think. My own post on this:
http://charliemarks.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/iraqi-resistance-not-bad-people-says-head-of-british-army/
Got the “not bad people” in the title… I’d never make it as a journo
Tsk, tsk – if you’re going to report something as important as this, you do it in passing right at the end of the article, preferably in a smaller font size. Didn’t they teach you that at journalism school?
It seems inconceivable that the mainstream press would report a speech so heavily and yet almost unanimously fail to mention one of its most important details, but it appears that this is what has happened.
I blogged on this over an hour ago, but I neglected to point out this fact: That this element of Sir Richard’s remarks was so under reported! Nice shot!!
And I missed the You-Tube! Nice…
Gen. Dannatt’s comments are similar to those made by Major General Joseph Taluto, a senior U.S. military chief, back in 2005:
GR8 Comment! Linked!
cheers.
There was an interesting guest on Democracy Now! the other week talking about various arab issues. He said a very similar thing, though of course he wasn’t a general. I remember Chomsky saying something along the lines that we don’t need government censorship in the west as there is already a culture of self-censorship in the media.