BBC is actively aiding and abetting in war crimes

Dear Steve Herrmann, Editor, News Online

Is this another example of BBC’s independent, fair and balanced reporting?

Air strike kills 'Iraq militants'

US forces in Iraq have killed 12 suspected militants and a woman in a raid and air strike on a house outside Baghdad, military officials said.

The military says troops came under fire when approaching the house, which it described as a militant hideout.

All the dead men were said to have been wearing vests loaded with ammunition. There was no word on US casualties.

In other incidents, four bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad and one civilian was killed in a roadside bomb.

Are you paid to print US and UK military dispatches? Who are these 12 men? And the woman? “Military officials” can say whatever they want, but you are journalists not soldiers and you work to inform nor to help government’s propaganda. Where is the skepticism?

A few weeks ago, BBC’s Jim Muir wrote me: “As to your suggestion that we should run an IRIN report and say nobody else is reporting that - well, that is not how it works.... you can't spend airspace reporting things you believe are wrong. Life is too short and Swarmer was already in my view greatly exaggerated for all the reasons I went into in that website piece. IRIN is a news agency of which there are many, and a single agency report has to be checked and verified before we could use it”

It came out that that IRIN report was true [“Hundreds of families have fled the city of Samarra, some 120 km northwest of the capital, Baghdad, after US coalition and Iraqi forces launched the biggest air offensive in the country since 2003.”] but the BBC and Jim Muir never acknowledged it, let alone running a story about those “Hundreds of families”.

But it seems the BBC has no problem in printing what “military officials said”.

You are actively aiding and abetting in war crimes.

Gabriele Zamparini