On Borrowed Time Page 10

  In late November 2002 UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix returned to Iraq. On 27 January 2003, Blix reported on the progress of his team, UNMOVIC, to the Security Council. It was a tough and critical but also balanced and nuanced account. Iraq had “on the whole cooperated rather well” in the inspection process. Certain documents he asked for had been provided; others had not yet been. Certain personnel had been interviewed, but not enough of them and only with officials present. Even though much biological agent had been destroyed in the past, Blix was still worried that while Iraq claimed that it had destroyed all its biological agents, it had not yet provided UNMOVIC with the proof. A 12,000-page document of December 2002 regrettably largely comprised old material, but there was some important new material in it as well. And so on. In retrospect, as Blix argued in his memoir, he did not disagree with the analysis of a journalist he respected that his tough report sought to convince Baghdad to save itself by becoming more helpful, more quickly. His general attitude was this: “UNMOVIC … is not presuming that there are proscribed items and activities in Iraq, but nor is it … presuming the opposite.”

  On 29 January 2003, the Australian editorialised on the Blix report which it called, altogether fancifully and fictitiously, “a chronicle of despair”. The editorial is a good illustration of its ferocious pursuit of war and its willingness to bend the truth to suit its purpose. The Australian claimed that Blix’s report was “an inventory of a shop of horrors” and that “the evidence that this regime is committed to arming itself with weapons of a horror that equals and even exceeds nuclear warheads is incontrovertible”. Blix had in fact argued clearly, as we have seen, that the existence of WMD in Iraq could, at this stage of the inspections, neither be presumed nor denied. While admitting sotto voce that inspectors were allowed to visit “specific sites as requested”, the Australian claimed that the Blix report “details how the Iraqis are cooperating with the UN team in form rather than substance and that they confect excuses to make the inspectors’ work as difficult as possible. Saddam’s regime dances the dance of cooperation, but slowly and clumsily and with a desire to lead their partner away from the regime’s laboratories and weapons dumps.” This is a near-complete distortion. Blix argued that “Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field … access has been provided to all sites … and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad …” He hoped that the excellent cooperation in “process” would soon be equalled in “substance”, that is to say by the regime’s voluntarily surrendering any existing WMD items or providing incontrovertible proof of their destruction. Blix had tried to explain what he meant about cooperation in substance by arguing that in comparison with the South African process of nuclear disarmament, “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance – not even today – of the disarmament, which was demanded of it …” The Australian pounced, as did the supporters of war in Washington and London. “This sentence alone,” the Australian argued, “justified military action.” In his memoir Blix reflected ruefully about how the Washington war party had made great mischief with these words.

  For the Australian the moral of the Blix report was clear. Saddam had retained a WMD arsenal. It was certain that “sooner or later he would use them” against Israel or Kuwait as he once had against the Kurds. Sanctions against Saddam Hussein would not work. Nor could a case now be made for delay. Saddam was a master of “delay and obfuscation”. While the will of the United States was strong, the will of the United Nations was notoriously weak. The Security Council must make up its mind quickly. If Blix wanted to continue with the apparently futile inspections, he must be given a firm date in the near future before reporting back to the UN. If his report remained unsatisfactory, it would be time for military action. If the UN failed in its duty, the United States and its allies must “serve the world community by taking on the burden alone”. In this entirely typical pre-war editorial, the spirit of the Blix report had been thoroughly misrepresented by the Australian in order to advance the case for war. In the same edition of the paper, the full text of Blix’s UN speech was published. If anyone actually read it, they would have been amazed.

  On the eve of war, the front-page headlines of the Australian began to appear in capitals. War came. Headlines were now not only capitalised but doubled in size. “FIRST STRIKE ON BAGHDAD”. “PUNCH INTO IRAQ”. Within three weeks, because of its overwhelmingly superior force, the “Coalition of the Willing” had reached Baghdad. Huge bold capitalised headlines captured the Murdoch empire’s political message. “REGIME IN RUINS”. “SADDAM’S GRAVE?” “END OF A TYRANT”. “TYRANTS BEWARE”. On 11 and 12 April, the Australian supported this atmosphere with two triumphalist editorials. The first located the victory within the neo-conservative post-Cold War narrative. The collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was the Middle Eastern equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Once again the people were dancing in the streets. The thirst for freedom was universal and unquenchable. The second editorial drew the domestic implications of the victory for what it called the “culture war fought within the West”. While “the performance of the mainstream Left” had been “politically inept”, the performance of the self-hating anti-Western “intellectual Left” had been nothing less than “a disgrace”. A “fascinating case” in this regard was Carmen Lawrence, who had predicted that as a result of the war there might be “three million refugees” and that “nearly half-a-million Iraqis would be killed”. As the editorial sneered, this was “wrong but only by a factor of 400”. “Never underestimate the power of ideology and myth – in this case anti-Americanism – to trump reality. But at least we know for sure it is not love, but being a left-wing intellectual, that means never having to say you’re sorry.”

  This breezy editorial was in part penned by the Australian’s resident right-wing intellectual smart-aleck, Imre Salusinszky. It was entitled “Coalition of the Whining Got It Wrong”. Re-reading this editorial was a strange experience. Since the invasion of Iraq there have been more than three million refugees and another 1.5 million internally displaced people. The most plausible figure for civilian deaths due to the invasion is, in my view, between 300,000 and 400,000.

  It was typical of the mentality of the intellectual Left, the Australian argued in an editorial on 11 April 2003, that already there were complaints that no weapons of mass destruction – the casus belli justifying the invasion – had been discovered. It called for patience. As weeks and then months passed, and as the fearful disorder that the invasion had visited upon Iraq was beginning to become clear, it dawned on the advocates of war at the Australian that the non-discovery of WMD posed an awkward problem. How they responded to the non-appearance of WMD was a useful way of assessing their capacity for self-criticism and their political character.

  Sheridan simply could not admit to himself that he had been wrong, or to put it in his foolish language, that it had been Tony Blair and not Saddam Hussein who had been the “monstrous liar”. On 10 July 2003, he published an article, “WMD Doubts Are Ludicrous”, in which he claimed that the hardline State Department right-winger John Bolton had provided him “almost as an afterthought” with the “sensational” evidence that would prove the existence of Saddam’s WMD arsenal. “The evidence that Hussein had WMD programs is so overwhelming [Bolton] can barely understand how it is doubted.” The evidence never appeared. On 31 January 2004, in a Basil Fawlty–like performance, Sheridan sought to explain the apparent absence of WMD. Was it not possible that Saddam’s denials were deliberately unconvincing, attempts to fool his neighbours that he still possessed them without providing the West with a smoking gun? Or again, perhaps his own scientists had misled Saddam into believing that Iraq did indeed possess WMD. “It is a bit much to expect the CIA to know more about the internal situation in Iraq than Hussein himself.” In his heart of hearts, Sheridan was still not convinced. Even a
fter the Washington hawk David Kay, who had been put onto the case by George W. Bush, concluded that Iraq had not possessed a WMD arsenal for several years, Sheridan thought it perfectly possible that stockpiles “are buried and as yet unfound, or that they were transported to Syria”. In late February 2004 he spoke of these matters to two retired Israeli intelligence experts. They expressed the opinion that “two living rooms full of key biological and chemical material” might yet be discovered. Sheridan thought this “plausible”. Of one thing, however, he was sure. In a coming parliamentary inquiry into the Australian intelligence failure over Iraq, John Howard “should not make any admissions of error by his Government or the intelligence services. To do so would be wrong in fact and would tend to demoralise his supporters.”

  One of the greatest weaknesses of Chris Mitchell’s editorship of the Australian is that he has allowed Greg Sheridan to remain his foreign editor throughout. Sheridan is a man who argued in different columns that George W. Bush was the Winston Churchill of our era; that unlike mediocre politicians like Barack Obama and John McCain, the “new star” of American politics, Sarah Palin, was able to combine “celebrity” with “character”; that President Obama’s “anti-Israel hysteria” was leading his administration towards “licensing a mutant strain of anti-semitism”; and that the United States would most likely be strengthened by the crash of Wall Street in September 2008. Throughout the Mitchell years Sheridan has displayed almost no interest in either global poverty or climate change. A Factiva data search brings up one passing reference to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. In one of his columns, he based his climate change denialism on the rising house prices at Vaucluse. The problem with Sheridan is not that he lacks eloquence or intelligence or even that he is so right-wing. The problem is that he lacks judgement and the capacity to learn from his many, many egregious mistakes.

  The Australian’s editorial response to the absence of a WMD arsenal was even more revealing than that of its foreign editor. On 7 June 2003, the Australian posed the fundamental question: “Where are Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction?” As the governments of the United States and UK had assured the world of “the horrors of Saddam’s armoury”, they should now either “produce evidence the weapons existed or explain why they cannot”. It argued that although WMD might never be discovered, the evidence for their existence at the time of the invasion was “overwhelming”. Perhaps Saddam had “dispersed” his weapons. Perhaps he had “destroyed the evidence”. In any case, although it was admittedly taking too long to restore order in Iraq, because of the “quick and relatively bloodless victory” the benefits were already flowing. A tyrant had been toppled. The possibility for a lasting peace settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians had been created.

  In December 2003 Saddam Hussein was captured. On 20 December the Australian published a very upbeat editorial. The people were jubilant. Bazaars were opening. A free press existed. The paper was now willing to accept that WMD might not have existed when Iraq was invaded. “It now appears that much of the intelligence allied governments relied on was wrong.” However, Saddam’s track record as a “warmonger” and the Australian’s self-generated supposed fact that “he refused to cooperate with the United Nations team led by Hans Blix” meant that Saddam was “the architect of his own doom”. I had once assumed that the idea that war was to be regarded as a last resort was a consensual Western value. Not apparently at the Australian. It argued that “when national security is involved, erring on the side of caution is no crime”. According to this logic, it was better to go to war – even if that risked massive loss of life and the creation of decades of disorder for a non-Western people – than to endure the possibility of a new terrorist attack on a Western country.

  On 20 March 2004, the anniversary of the invasion, the Australian published another editorial, “We Were Right to Go to War Against Iraq”. It acknowledged that “Western intelligence monstrously misjudged the extent of Saddam’s existing arsenal”. It argued that “there is no such thing as a good war”. But it also argued that some wars are self-evidently “just” and must therefore be fought and that Iraq was a clear example. The Coalition of the Willing had gone to war not only on the basis of false intelligence, but also a set of wildly implausible assumptions about the future behaviour of Iraq and a strategic doctrine that would overturn any civilised conception of international law. And yet, in the words of the Australian, the question of whether the war on Iraq was just, unbelievably enough, was “an open and shut case”.

  That war was responsible for the deaths of up to 400,000 people and the displacement of millions more. And yet Chris Mitchell’s Australian has not expressed one word of remorse or explanation for the enthusiastic and uncritical support it had given to the war. Apparently it is not being a left-wing intellectual but an editor-in-chief of the Australian that means never having to say you’re sorry.

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  On 4 December 2010 the new environment editor at the Australian, Graham Lloyd, published a dramatic article of almost 4000 words entitled “The Australian Answers Its Critics Over Its Reporting of Climate Change”. Over the issue of global warming, the position of the newspaper had supposedly been maliciously distorted by its culture-war enemies. Chris Mitchell regretted not having sued Clive Hamilton in 2007 over offensive comments about him in the book Scorcher. He now intended to sue a journalism lecturer, Julie Posetti, over a tweet. “In essence,” Mitchell explained to Lloyd, “we have allowed misleading polemics to frame the debate about our views and assumed smart people will see our real position simply by reading our paper.” As it turned out, this had been a mistake. “There is no dispute,” Lloyd wrote, “that The Australian has opened its news and opinion pages to a wide range of views on the existence and extent of climate change and what should be done about it. But the position taken by the newspaper in its daily editorial column, or leader, has been clear for well more [sic] than a decade.” According to Mitchell, “this newspaper’s editorial position on climate science and its longstanding support for a global response to limit greenhouse gas emissions” had been “misrepresented” for years. Lloyd sought to correct the historical record by cherry-picking passages from past Australian editorials.

  The first editorial line Lloyd quoted was from 6 April 1995. It read: “The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring unnaturally, primarily as a result of industrial development and deforestation, is no longer seriously disputed in the world.” The claim implicitly being made here is that under Mitchell the Australian continued to support the scientific consensus on climate change in its editorials. This is an outright falsehood. What follows is a selection from the scores of covertly and sometimes overtly denialist comments drawn from editorials over the Mitchell years.

  On 12 January 2006 the Australian argued that “climate change may be a mirage”. Two days later it explained that “for the prophets of gloom … it is an article of the green faith that the world’s climate is changing for the worse, because coal-fired power plants pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere … [W]hile environmental activists say science shows fossil fuels are responsible for a global warming crisis, which may be right, they could just as easily be wrong.” On 15 March 2007, the Australian greeted the Martin Durkin documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle with enthusiasm. It welcomed what it called “the emergence of renewed scepticism within the scientific community” in “a debate that appears to have been hijacked by non-scientists, political advisers and bureaucrats”. On 21 April 2008, the paper was heartened by the entry of at least two non-scientists into the debate over climate change science – the churchman Cardinal Pell and the political scientist Don Aitkin. Both were, it argued, “welcome voices of caution”. The Australian claimed on 29 November 2008 that “if climate change is real – and ‘if’ is the operative word – every aspect of the phenomenon needs to be picked over and analysed with the utmost rigour”. The entry into the debate on climate change science of the g
eologist Ian Plimer, who argued that he could demolish every single claim made by climate scientists, was even more warmly welcomed by the Australian than the entry of Pell or Aitkin. On 18 April 2009, the Australian argued that “as Professor Plimer demonstrates, expert irritation does not disguise the fact that the science is anything but settled”. While the qualified scientists might genuinely believe that “there is a 90 per cent certainty that global warming is human-induced”, as Plimer had explained “… they do not know. No one does.” Ten days later the paper told its readers that “it remains to be proved that the rise” in “the levels of carbon dioxide” is “the major driver of global warming”, The Australian seized upon the hacked climate scientist emails released on the eve of the Copenhagen conference. “In the past couple of weeks,” it argued, “we have had a glimpse of the zealotry of the believers – and the gaps in their data – thanks to the exposure of the emails from the University of East Anglia.” No editorials commented on the successive inquiries that subsequently cleared the scientists of wrongdoing. Despite a faux solemnity – “the evidence of sloppy science is depressing” – in truth the Australian appeared to be absolutely delighted when two embarrassing errors were discovered in the 1500-page Fourth Report of the IPCC. Indeed, it devoted no fewer than four editorials to the matter. On 19 January 2010, the Australian told its readers that the mistake over the Himalayan glaciers read like “a Monty Python skit”; on 22 January that for the IPCC “it does not get more humiliating” than this; and on 26 January that “public faith” in the IPCC “is evaporating” and that now “the premise behind global action – that the world is heating at a dangerous rate and that we can do something about it – needs to be rigorously tested”. Finally, on 2 February 2010, it informed its readers that “the scientific evidence is being questioned around the world” and that “a fresh look at scientific data on climate change is needed before politicians can ask taxpayers to embark on schemes that could lead to trillions of dollars of lost wealth around the globe in coming decades”.