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In the summer of 2018, BBC cameraman Andy Alcroft was waiting to film an interview at Exeter St David’s railway station, when he was approached by one of Amar’s friends. “You should do a report about him - Amar. The boy who came over from Iraq. Remember him? He’s got an amazing story,” he said. Andy took some contact details and we went to meet Amar in the Devon village where he still lives. We thought we might end up doing some kind of “catch-up” feature. “Whatever happened to the orphan Amar?” - that kind of thing. But when Amar revealed he had been receiving unexpected social media messages from a stranger, the story took an unexpected turn.
posted by satoshi on May 18, 2019 - 25 comments

The BBC was given the first look by foreign media inside Baghdad's Rusafa prison.
posted by gman on Nov 26, 2008 - 4 comments

"A venal, dysfunctional government." That is how the San Francisco Chronicle describes the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. Now an investigation by the BBC's respected Panorama TV program estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq. But they are not allowed to report fully because of US gagging order.
posted by Susurration on Jun 10, 2008 - 40 comments

Question Time Iraq Special (Skip to 04:45 to begin). Question Time is a British TV institution, where five prominent politicians debate current affairs while being questioned by a studio audience. The Iraq edition, available online, features the British Secretary of State for Defence, a popular, anti-war former party leader, the aristocratic old socialist leading the Stop-the-War coalition, the first female leader of a Muslim state … and John Bolton.
posted by Aloysius Bear on Mar 22, 2007 - 33 comments

Baghdad: Mapping the violence. Interactive flash based bomb data navigator from the bbc.
posted by srboisvert on Mar 20, 2007 - 19 comments

BBC confirms the story That box on his back, that earpiece? He's never said exactly how God talks to him, only that He does ....
posted by hank on Oct 6, 2005 - 131 comments

Blair government attacks the BBC, while attempting to "fix" the news. In the aftermath of the Hutton Report fallout, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott reopened the war of words between Labour and the BBC by accusing the BBC of slanting their news coverage of the war in Iraq. Apparently, an Iraqi friend of Prescott's, Shanaz Ibrahim, was refused a (unscheduled) interview. What Prescott fails to mention, however, is that Ms. Ibrahim has lived in London for over 30 years, and is married to Abdul-Latif Rashid, the brother-in-law of Iraq's president. So... where have all the *real* Iraqis gone, anyway?
posted by insomnia_lj on Apr 27, 2005 - 18 comments

BBC TV's Newsnight programme listed some Iraq-related blogs, including a tragic US soldier's blog [previously discussed here] . Interesting to me were the first-hand Iraqi views of the occupation. In one, a local girl blogs her responses to the WMDs that were never found and to the controversial Marine execution in Fallujah [discussed here], and describes the use of Valium in wartime.

For those of us who wish to hear the views of Iraqis, there's Words from Iraq, which collects posts from a spectrum of English-speaking Iraqi blogs, such as this description of the banality of kidnappings.
posted by iffley on Jan 21, 2005 - 19 comments

Physically and sexually mistreating detainees at Abu Ghraib under orders... 10 years.
Abusing prisoners, raping a young Iraqi boy, and lying under oath(allegedly) because you're a "go-getter"... $164 million, $16 to $85 million.

Knowing the President and members of congress on both sides of the aisle have your back so long as you're not enlisted(wouldn't have covered corporate types, but what the hey, thought I'd toss it in)... Priceless!
posted by rocket_skates on Jan 15, 2005 - 76 comments

As the verdict of Butler Report into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, draws near in Britain, a senior intelligence source reveals that MI6 took the "rare step" of withdrawing the intelligence assessment that underpinned the claim that Saddam had continued to produce WMD (an admission that such information was fundamentally unreliable), however Blair did not tell the public "that the evidence of WMD was crumbling beneath him". [Watch the Panorama programme in question here for 7 days from 11-7-2004] The Dossier that Lord Hutton declared was not sexed-up (leading to senior BBC resignations), Dr Brian Jones (former head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Intelligence Staff) says was sexed-up, and details exactly how.
posted by Blue Stone on Jul 12, 2004 - 26 comments

The BBC is buying up search terms for 'Hutton Inquiry' and 'Hutton Report' through Google's Adwords service. I see this almost as the online journalistic equivalent of a government sexing up dossiers, and a first for any news organisation, according to the Guardian. Regardless of your (or Hutton's) opinion of the BBC's role in the Kelly affair, I don't see how they can possibly justify trying to control where people get their news from, especially as Hutton is almost certain to find the corporation (well, Andrew Gilligan anyway) to be a contributing factor in Kelly's suicide.
posted by cbrody on Jan 27, 2004 - 13 comments

30,000 bombs were dropped on Iraq during the war. This is the story of just one. (RealVideo, 1h14m) While filming at a cross-roads in northern Iraq on April 6, a US Navy jet launched a bomb into a crowd of US and Kurdish soldiers who a BBC team were accompanying. In the seconds that followed, BBC cameraman Fred Scott began to film the disaster as it unfolded, footage which was heavily censored when shown on US news.
posted by Mwongozi on Nov 10, 2003 - 13 comments

BBC "Fresh doubts over Iraq's arsenal". CNN "Pentagon: WMD report consistent with U.S. case" Google News lists many other sources on this topic, with varying titles depending on who you read.
posted by CrazyJub on Jun 6, 2003 - 29 comments

No Respect I Tell Ya, No Respect Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is attempting to surrender to US forces, according to a London-based Arabic newspaper. But Al-Sharq al-Awsat says the Americans have refused to arrest Mr Sahhaf - who became a familiar face during the war with his upbeat assessments of Iraqi military "successes" - because he does not appear on their "most wanted" list of 55 former regime officials
posted by turbanhead on Apr 29, 2003 - 19 comments

The culture of a society, is largely invisable to it's inhabitants. While the bigger things in our own cultures are easily identifiable, such as food, customs and religion. More unique things like hitting a statue or a picture of Saddam with a shoe, are not. Symbolism is usually subtle and can easily be missed or misinterpreted by people from other cultures. This is a great article from BBC WORLD NEWS which explains some of the symbolism we're seeing in the Iraqi gatherings.
posted by Civa on Apr 10, 2003 - 2 comments

The idea of weblogs has defenitely inspired BBC Online news for making the following pages:

• BBC reporters' collective weblog on Iraq
• Iraq at a glace

posted by hoder on Mar 20, 2003 - 4 comments

We will not fly our flags in their country The finest speech so far in the whole war thing. Good luck boys!
posted by terrymiles on Mar 20, 2003 - 51 comments

At what point does a government have to stop and wonder if it's judged the mood correctly?

The UK government manages to bribe a rebel with a cushy job, but not one, not two, but three other MPs walk away from the government in one day. Are things going wrong in the UK?
posted by twine42 on Mar 18, 2003 - 63 comments

Pentagon threatens to target journalists in Iraq. (RealAudio, 49 minutes into the broadcast.)
In an interview with Radio One Ireland, Kate Adie, former chief news correspondent for the BBC, drops a bombshell.
If satellite uplinks from the press are detected in Baghdad, they would be "targeted down", said a senior US military official. "They know this. They've been warned."
Ms. Adie also revealed that the US military are openly asking journalists what their feelings are on the war, and are using this information to block reporters from access to reporting on the conflict.
These actions are "shameless" and "entirely hostile to the free spread of information," says Ms. Adie. "What actually appalls me is the difference between twelve years ago and now. I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness."
posted by insomnia_lj on Mar 12, 2003 - 74 comments

Give It Up for MC Zhirinovsky Flamboyant Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, renowned for his controversial views on Iraq, has had his words turned into an anti-war rap song. The song, titled "Don't you dare go shooting at Baghdad", is being launched on the internet, according to the Russian television station TVS.
posted by turbanhead on Feb 26, 2003 - 7 comments

Was a US attack on the Taliban been in the works since July? According to this BBC article, the US had been planning a "military action", for the end of October, since mid July. The plan was to invade Afghanistan,oust the Taliban, and install a moderate government, possibly under former king Zahir Shah. Are the attacks last week simply going to legitimize this pre-existing plan? Or am I simply being too paranoid?
posted by bshort on Sep 18, 2001 - 32 comments