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Quagmire sightings I’ve spent nearly the entire evening watching the news. BBC1 and ITV4 in particular had a great deal of coverage of the event here. It is of course about politics according to the BBC Washington correspondents… as if Dean ever had a prayer of a snowflake chance in hell of winning next fall.
Ken Adelman gave two marvelous remote screen debate performances within an hour and on both channels. Jon Snow was at a loss for words when he said to Adelman: “Of course you will be for that (Saddam’s execution)” And Ken had him off balance simply by retorting, “Why do you assume that?”
But the biggest laughs I had this evening were the constant use of the Q word. On BBC1 there were two different reporters using it within minutes of each other.
Hey, the BBC lads in Iraq have to invent some silver lining in all this!
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I actually heard correspondent Ben Brown say something like:
“But the capture of Saddam does not seem to be having any effect on the attacks. Only hours after his capture a car bomb…”
Well, ignoring the fact that terrorists are hardly likely to call off attacks just like that there is a little logical problem here: the news of Saddam’s capture was not broadcast until
Adelman was on the World Service programme “The World Today” with some generic BBC female presenter. She asked him about the “non-stop violence” in Iraq, and Adelman rightly pointed out that Saddam was engaging in far more non-stop violence when he was murdering 300,000 or more of his fellow Iraqis. You could practically hear the presentrix seethe.
This morning the Beeb’s female reported in Baghdad (whose name escapes me) was in top “quagmire” form, stating that despite the joy the “resistance” was still bombing away at the froces of occupation – somehow failing to grasp that today’s bombs, and yesterday’s, killed purely Iraqi targets…
Reuters is also doing a wonderful job
On the One ‘o’ clock news today I heard a BBC correspondent telling us that showing Saddam on television is a violation of his human rights, and another informed us that he will be executed in order that Bush may win another term as president. As a source of news the BBC foreign correspondents are almost valueless. Is there anybody in Britain who does not know their script on Bush or Israel or Iraq by heart?
It was very interesting to watch the news as it broke on the BBC. While CNN and Sky News were rightly reporting the “capture” of Saddam, BBC were reporting merely the “arrest” of Saddam – as if a traffic offender were being taken into custody. Not the capture of a war criminal – let alone the decapitation of an insurgence. It seemed an event of great import was being downgraded. Or am I reading too much into all this?
Of the options offered by the author immediately above – I concur with the last one . And it’s nice to agree on something for ’tis the season of goodwill, after all.
Wouldn’t the term “quagmire” more accurately describe the NHS?
Pardon my ignorance, but why on earth are you people still watching BBC news? I mean, between CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and ABC, CBS, and NBC you should be able to find out what is actually going on vs. what BBC would (very,very much) like to be going on. My understanding is you already have to pay something like $200/mo to get BBC. Why not use that money to get cable instead?
ema
Many of us live in the UK. In the UK the BBC is free-to-air while you have to pay for the others – if you can get them at all. The alternative, ITV, which is heavily regulated by the British state is almost as bad. The BBC is paid for by a TV tax which is compulsory for all those in possession of a television.
That’s why it is hated so much.
Patrick, thank you, but my question was directed to UK viewers. (Here in the US you get BBC News free on PBS-type stations and on CNN, or you can pay a few extra $/mo and get BBC America.) So, if you live in the UK and don’t like the BBC, why not use the TV tax to order something other than the BBC? After all, since you pay for it, you should be the one who gets to decide what stations you get.
ema – If you own any TV set in Britain, even if you just use it for playing videos, you must pay a “licence fee” of around $160 annually. You do not get to decide how your tax is deployed. You do not have a choice of not paying it and “buying out” instead. If you own a TV set, you pay the licence fee under penalty of a large fine plus imprisonment.
Is this clear? You can’t opt out and say, “Thanks, but I’m taking satellite instead.” Yes, it is fascist, but it is the only way they can fund the BBC. No one in their right mind would take BBC if payment was optional. It’s in the interest of the socialists to protect the BBC (like the National Health Service, it’s promoted as “the envy of the world”) at all costs as it promotes their multi-culti, one-worlder, appeasenik line.