Before the invasion, the BBC was convinced that Saddam had WMDs, and accused the American sof ignoring the threat. After the invasion, the BBC knew that Saddam never had WMDs, accusing the Americans of lying about them.
Read this from Highway99.
While I was trying to find out whether BBC reporter and presenter Jeremy Paxman had explicitly endorsed the idea that HIV is a manufactured virus (see previous post) -- apparently he did not -- I came across a new 2002 edition of his book, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical & Biological Warfare, with a newly written final chapter; and the final chapter said something which, in the context of the way the BBC has covered the Iraq war, is almost as startling.Most of that final chapter is a strong argument trying to convince the reader that Saddam Hussein kept his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons after the first Gulf War, and that, at the time of the writing and publication of the new edition in 2001 and 2002, Saddam had an active program of producing chemical and biological weapons. Indeed, the new chapter is one of the most powerfully persuasive pieces of writing in favor of the idea of taking action against Saddam Hussein that I've ever seen. If I didn't know better, I might have guessed that Tony Blair or Christopher Hitchens had written it.Doesn't exactly sound like the BBC's point of view these days, does it?So why the difference in Paxman/BBC attitude between 2002 and 2003? I'll offer a hypothesis on that puzzle in a minute. But first the relevant excerpt. It's a long one, so if your time is limited, you might want to skim through and read the sections I've put in bold, which I consider the most immediately relevant. Remember, this edition of the book came out in August of 2002:
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