BBC's Hotel Journalism

Dear Jim Muir,

I hope all is well in Baghdad, at least in the hotel you are in.

About your piece “Can a new government rescue Iraq?” (Jim Muir, BBC News website)

Are you aware that Iraq has been illegally invaded? Are you aware that at the present there is a cruel, brutal, military occupation? Are you aware that this illegal invasion and occupation killed already hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians? Are you aware that the same occupation has tortured and imprisoned children, women and thousands of innocent Iraqis? Are you aware that the same occupation dismantled and destroyed the State Iraq, violated the Geneva Conventions all over the places and is responsible for the current situation in that country? Are you aware that the government you write about in your piece is simply a puppet government of a country under military occupation?

In your piece you write: “... Islamic jihadi militants, many of whom have come from outside.” Where do you think the American and British (and the other members of this illegal Coalition of the Willing) have come from?

In your 1,100 plus word piece on Iraq, you not even once mention that that country is under military occupation nor any other of the facts I wrote above. It takes non common skills to succeed in such a task. Finally I fully understand what Robert Fisk means when he writes “hotel journalism”.

Regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

P.S. Do you remember “Operation Swarmer” and that IRIN report [“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.”] ? You wrote me that everything in that report was false? According to you, nothing had ever happened. Well, it seems you were wrong and the IRIN report was true. Another example of “hotel journalism”?