BY ROHAN REARCE
Since the White House set its sights on the invasion of Iraq, the Murdoch family-owned press around the world has been solidly pro-war.
However, the April 7 edition of the Daily Telegraph, Murdoch's Sydney tabloid, set a new low for journalism and even for that paper's racist, pro-war hysteria. "KILLING ROOM" screamed the front page headline, below the kicker "Hidden evil". Below the banner headline was the subhead: "Coalition forces reveal Saddam's torture terror".
The front page article was about a warehouse discovered by British troops in which coffins containing human remains were stacked. The Telegraph described the warehouse as "an enormous charnel house containing remains of hundreds of Saddam's torture victims".
In fact, the warehouse, which the Telegraph described as "Resembling an immense makeshift morgue", was a makeshift morgue. The remains were not the victims of torture, but of Iranian soldiers killed in combat during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war which were awaiting repatriation to Iran as part of an agreement between Tehran and Baghdad, interrupted by the US-led invasion.
This would have been known to the Telegraph's editors since wire services had carried Iranian government statements on the nature of the remains the previous day. Indeed, in the fourth paragraph of its article, the Telegraph grudgingly noted that "Iran last night claimed many of the soldiers massacred by Saddam's henchmen in the 1980-1988 war and demanded their return". But the Tele is not a paper that lets facts get in the way of war propaganda.
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.