Monbiot, the Guardian and "professional journalism"

Monbiot on The Guardian writes:

Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorus chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam may have possibly used white phosphorus (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil ... and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly ... hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas." The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is an illegal chemical weapon. (Tuesday November 22, 2005)

This is the second time that The Guardian gets 'its' stories from this website.

On Tuesday November 15, 2005, Monbiot wrote in The Guardian:

Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun.

You may find the 'smoking gun' George Monbiot writes about, in my article 'BBC and Fallujah: War Crimes, Lies and Omertà' published on Wednesday, November 09, 2005 and published in many on-line publications: uruknet, U.S Labor Against the War, globalresearch.ca, and many others.

You may also read the full story of how the US Department of State was forced to issue a “NOTE” admitting that WP had been indeed used in Fallujah as a weapon, in my article on Monthly Review

As you may read in my articles, I have always acknowledged my sources. Question: Why can't mainstream media do the same?

I sent the Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger and the Guardian readers' editor Ian Mayes the following email:

Dear Alan Rusbridger,
Dear Ian Mayes,

Today, in Monbiot’s article “Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes “, I read: “Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US department of defence, dated April 1991, and titled ‘Possible use of phosphorus chemical’.” (George Monbiot, Tuesday November 22, 2005, The Guardian)

I’m happy to see such an improvement from: “But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun.” (The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it, George Monbiot, Tuesday November 15, 2005, The Guardian) In this article, Mr Monbiot must have forgot to credit where he had read about the subject he was writing since he only added a reference to his personal blog a few days later and after I had written to him a reminder. (See ref. 9 of “War Without Rules” http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/11/15/war-without-rules/ )

While I am honored to be part of the blogger’s community, I am also a filmmaker, a writer and a journalist, as Mr Monbiot knows perfectly well since he reads regularly my articles and has received my book “American Voices of Dissent”. If I had to write about Mr Monbiot, I wouldn’t describe him “the blogger George Monbiot”, even though he has a blog as I do.

Since my name appears in your newspaper, I would be grateful if you could publish this letter and correcting the “blogger Gabriele Zamparini” to “Gabriele Zamparini is a filmmaker, writer and journalist living in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries ‘XXI CENTURY’ and ‘PEACE!’ and author of ‘American Voices of Dissent’ (Paradigm Publishers, 2005). He also writes for his blog thecatsdream.com/blog. He can be reached at info@thecatsdream.com

Thank you.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

Will they answer? Or should i send them a bill? Stay tuned to know more...