Posted by The Editors
on November 2, 2009, 4:53 pm
Speaking to a global online audience from BBC Television Centre, as part of Coventry University 'Is World Journalism in Crisis?' event, Jeremy Paxman admitted he had made the wrong judgement call over evidence presented by Colin Powell in 2003, then US secretary of state:
"As far as I personally was concerned, there a came a point with the presentation of the so-called evidence, with the moment when Colin Powell sat down at the UN General Assembly and unveiled what he said was cast-iron evidence of things like mobile, biological, weapon facilities and the like...
"When I saw all of that, I said 'we know that Colin Powell is an intelligent thoughtful man, and a sceptical man. If he believes this to be the case; he's seen the evidence, I haven't.
"Now that evidence turned out to be absolutely meaningless but we only discover that after the event. So I am perfectly open to the accusation that we were hoodwinked. Clearly we were."
(http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/536290.php)
That sums up the complacency of so many mainstream journalists. It wasn't beyond Paxman, or other journalists, to investigate the credibility of the claims - there was no need to take them on trust.
Powell held up the vial of anthrax at the UN on February 5, 2003. We exposed his claims in an alert, five days later, on February 10, referencing the work of people like Scott Ritter, Glen Rangwala, the CIA and others. From our alert:
"... it is entirely uncontroversial that Iraq is only known to have produced liquid bulk anthrax, which has a shelf-life of just three years. The last known batch of liquid anthrax was produced in 1991 at a state-owned factory. That factory was then blown up in 1996. Any remaining anthrax is therefore, by now, sludge. Blair, again, must surely be aware of this.
"Professor Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) discounts the possibility that any Iraqi anthrax produced in bulk prior to 1991 could still be effectively weaponised:
"'Anthrax spores are extremely hardy and can achieve 65% to 80% lethality against untreated patients for years. Fortunately, Iraq does not seem to have produced dry, storable agents and only seems to have deployed wet Anthrax agents, which have a relatively limited life.'
('Iraq's Past and Future Biological Weapons Capabilities', 1998, p.13 http://www.csis.org/stratassessment/reports/iraq_bios.pd)
"Readers will recall that Colin Powell held up a vial of dry powder anthrax in his presentation to the United Nations, referring to the anthrax attacks on the United States. This is the anthrax that Iraq "does not seem to have produced", according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Powell is regularly described in the media as a 'dove'." (http://www.medialens.org/alerts/03/030210_Blairs_Betrayal1.html)
We told Paxman about the evidence contradicting Powell, and he ignored us - a lot of people wrote to him about it. He chose to trust Powell rather than to use his capacity for critical thought.
The Editors