Here’s the start of a BBC article about yesterday’s House of Commons debate:
At-a-glance: Iraq inquiry debate
Here are the key points from the House of Commons debate on the call for an inquiry into the Iraq war.
Adam Price
The Plaid Cymru MP opened the debate by saying the Iraq war was a “monumental catastrophe”, which was about “the breakdown in our very system of government”.
OK that’s interesting. So there’s going to be an inquiry, then? Reading down the article it certainly seems that way. Watching the 10 O’Clock News, however, we discover that actually there isn’t. The MPs voted against one. How they did after the statement above I shall never know. Perhaps there were some other statements which the BBC didn’t report.
Reactions in other sections of the liberal press have also been exciting. I bought the Independent this morning.
They were so upset about the results of the debate that they buried the news down at the bottom of the second page, choosing instead to publish what they have published repeatedly ever since the war started – a glorified article full of hyperbole complaining about it.
This reminded me about an entry on Black Triangle from September 4th:
Like the Daily Express, The Independent cannot be considered a newspaper. In fact, today’s Independent cover has even less news on it that the Daily Express, concerning itself with The World’s Greatest Green Inventions, or their glossy poster of birds in the electronic version, and the rest is concerned with the Independent’s raison d’etre: to prove that US and UK policies post-September 11th are wrong.
The examples used in the graphic on the front page are full of non-sequiturs and simplistic cause and effects – which is ironic given one of the charges made against Bush and Blair is that they hold a simplistic Manichaean view of the War on Terror. Nothing prior to 2001 is considered. All outcomes are seen as the result of US and UK policy. A terrorist lets of a suicide bomb outside a Shia temple? That’s Bush’s fault that is.
Read the whole thing. I think it’s a real shame that the Independent, once a respected newspaper, is gradually turning into a total shambles written by hacks who spend their entire time pushing political agendas. The only problem now is what to read instead…