Childish propaganda
Iraq, the MOD and class warfare
Matthew Holehouse
Published 06 August 2007
How the 'positive' story of the Iraq war could be taught to British children
Few would now dispute the case for the US-led invasion of Iraq was built on misinformation and half-truths but nearly five years on from the dodgy dossier, the government's propaganda offensive has opened on a new front: the classroom.
"After Iraq was expelled from Kuwait, the United Nations passed a cease-fire resolution. This resolution obligated Iraq to discontinue its nuclear weapons program. Iraq did not honour the cease-fire agreement by surrendering their weapons of mass destruction, and so resolution 678 was revived by the US government."
"Invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein, an oppressive dictator, from power, and to bring democracy to Iraq."
This isn't an extract from Blair's diaries or a White House press release. It comes from Defence Dynamics, an online teaching resource of forty lesson plans produced by the Ministry of Defence, which it hopes will reach thousands of GCSE classes from this September.
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A student 'fact sheet' states that the occupation has resulted in "Over 150 healthcare facilities completed and many more are in progress. 20 hospitals rehabilitated. Immunisation programme re-started in 2003. 70 million new text books distributed to schools. Sewage and wastewater treatment plants operating again."
Yet this rosy picture seems woefully at odds with a report by the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq, backed by Oxfam, which states that Iraq is facing a humanitarian crisis "of alarming scale and severity".
It finds that four million Iraqis are 'food-insecure' and that four million have fled, creating "the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world". The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since 2003, while 80 percent lack effective sanitation; and of 180 hospitals countrywide, "90 percent lack key resources including medical and surgical supplies". Whilst one of the resources, an anti-war newspaper article, notes that a majority of Iraqis do not support the occupation, no mention of this human catastrophe, nor of the 600,000 Iraqi dead and the daily car bombings, hostage takings and assassinations, is made in the draft.
It is not known how closely the MoD has controlled the content of the lesson plans, or whether the original brief stipulated that it should aim to portray the occupation in an positive light...
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http://www.newstatesman.com/200708060004
Matthew Holehouse
Published 06 August 2007
How the 'positive' story of the Iraq war could be taught to British children
Few would now dispute the case for the US-led invasion of Iraq was built on misinformation and half-truths but nearly five years on from the dodgy dossier, the government's propaganda offensive has opened on a new front: the classroom.
"After Iraq was expelled from Kuwait, the United Nations passed a cease-fire resolution. This resolution obligated Iraq to discontinue its nuclear weapons program. Iraq did not honour the cease-fire agreement by surrendering their weapons of mass destruction, and so resolution 678 was revived by the US government."
"Invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein, an oppressive dictator, from power, and to bring democracy to Iraq."
This isn't an extract from Blair's diaries or a White House press release. It comes from Defence Dynamics, an online teaching resource of forty lesson plans produced by the Ministry of Defence, which it hopes will reach thousands of GCSE classes from this September.
[]
A student 'fact sheet' states that the occupation has resulted in "Over 150 healthcare facilities completed and many more are in progress. 20 hospitals rehabilitated. Immunisation programme re-started in 2003. 70 million new text books distributed to schools. Sewage and wastewater treatment plants operating again."
Yet this rosy picture seems woefully at odds with a report by the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq, backed by Oxfam, which states that Iraq is facing a humanitarian crisis "of alarming scale and severity".
It finds that four million Iraqis are 'food-insecure' and that four million have fled, creating "the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world". The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since 2003, while 80 percent lack effective sanitation; and of 180 hospitals countrywide, "90 percent lack key resources including medical and surgical supplies". Whilst one of the resources, an anti-war newspaper article, notes that a majority of Iraqis do not support the occupation, no mention of this human catastrophe, nor of the 600,000 Iraqi dead and the daily car bombings, hostage takings and assassinations, is made in the draft.
It is not known how closely the MoD has controlled the content of the lesson plans, or whether the original brief stipulated that it should aim to portray the occupation in an positive light...
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http://www.newstatesman.com/200708060004
posted by Andrew Simon at 11:32 PM
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