1 min read
I'm listening to Victoria Derbyshire on FiveLive as I write. The question of the day: "Do you believe the Americans? Are things improving in Iraq?"
The programme has been on for twenty three minutes so far, and there's not been a single voice allowed on air to suggest that the facts presented yesterday by General Petraeus are not simply made up. That's right: the BBC has so far devoted an entire programme to giving people the opportunity to phone in and say that the Americans are lying.
Not one call has been aired suggesting that there might, just might, be some improvement as a result of the surge.
And that's absolutely not because that's the view that all callers to the programme have taken. I know that for a fact - because I called in to redress the balance. And have I been put on air? Of course not.
It is thus an editorial decision to air only calls which say nothing is improving and the Americans are lying.
We pay our licence fee for this.
UPDATE: Hugh Sykes. the BBC's Baghdad correspondent, is also saying the same thing - that violence has simply been displaced.
FURTHER UPDATE: 9.29 - a man has been allowed to say it is right to stick it out in Iraq and that we are all safer as a result of American efforts in the war on terror. Greeted with incredulity by Victoria Derbyshire: "Do you think the people in Madrid, in Bali, in London feel safer now". Aha. Terror is the Americans' fault.
ANOTHER UPDATE: This is sheer genius. According to one caller, the Americans want Iraq to be a mess so that when the Democrats win the Presidency, they will be stuck with it and suffer the electoral consequences in 2012, leading to another Republican President.