BEYOND NORTHERN IRAQ: STUHUGHESIRAQ@MAIL.COM

WHERE HAVE ALL THE PROTESTORS GONE?



A year ago to the day the bombs started falling in Baghdad. I was in Northern Iraq, my two feet intact, waiting for the fall of Kirkuk and blissly ignorant of what would happen to me less than a fortnight later.

I never got to see the Kirkuk fall. By then I was in hospital in the UK, facing an uncertain future -- which thankfully has turned out to be far brighter than I could have possibly hoped for.

Journalists love anniversaries -- and the first birthday of the War In Iraq is no exception. We've sent special teams to Baghdad and Basra and every news outlet is examining the state of the country one year on. In fact, I've been asked to write my own "one year on" piece for BBC News Online.

For me, though, the fact that the invasion of Iraq began 365 days ago is of little importance.

Today's demonstration in London looked like something of a damp squib -- around 25,000 protestors compared with the hundreds of thousands who turned out a year ago.

In February 2003, opposition to the war here in Britain was so strong that it prompted the country's biggest ever turnout. Has the world moved on so quickly that the public has forgotten the deep anger it felt last year? Have people changed their minds about the validity of the war? Or have they simply accepted that they lost the argument and moved on?

If hundreds of thousands of people were angry enough to take to the streets a year ago, they should be absolutely furious now -- but strangely it seems they aren't.

Discuss

Another Jayson Blair?
Ex-USA TODAY reporter faked major stories

Meanwhile, the International News Safety Institute reiterates its call for the independence and impartiality of journalists to be respected, as five more media workers are killed in Iraq.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER



Proof that there is some justice in the world. Coca-Cola gets its come-uppance for ripping off consumers by flogging bottled tap water at 85p a pop.

Half a million bottles of Dasani -- launched earlier this month amid claims that its NASA-tested filtration process made it "as pure as bottled water gets" -- are being recalled because they could contain high levels of the potentially carcinogenic chemical, bromate.

"Coca-Cola has indicated that the bromate was caused by its manufacturing process," sniffed a spokesman for Thames Water, whose H20 was being palmed off as "pure, still water."

A well-deserved PR disaster for Coke.

TALKIN' (CRAP) ABOUT A REVOLUTION



I've long maintained that Glenn Reynolds is a clueless idiot, but it was only this morning that I realised what a complete clueless idiot he really is.

Scanning over his recent postings, I saw that he got very excited about reports of "unrest" in Iran -- predicting the downfall of the Islamic regime in a hail of home-made bombs and molotov cocktails.

Or it could have just been the Chaharshanbeh Suri, or Red Wednesday, festival -- officially recognised this year for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Glenn -- you really should stop pontificating and get out of your office once in a while.

DISCUSS

A new digital pay TV service called Top Up TV will be launched at the end of the month.

It'll charge £7.99 to viewers of...er.....Freeview. Now where's my copy of the Trade Descriptions Act?

At last -- someone at the New York Times talks some sense over the reasons for last weekend's Spanish election upset.

Paul Krugman echoes exactly what I said yesterday:

"The Aznar government had taken the country into Iraq against the wishes of 90 percent of the public.

"Spanish voters weren't intimidated by the terrorist bombings — they turned on a ruling party they didn't trust. When the government rushed to blame the wrong people for the attack, tried to suppress growing evidence to the contrary and used its control over state television and radio both to push its false accusation and to play down antigovernment protests, it reminded people of the broader lies about the war.

"By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy. But in the world according to Mr. Bush's supporters, anyone who demands accountability is on the side of the evildoers."

The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland also makes a similar point.

I've found an ally in Suw over at Chocolate and Vodka, who steps up the pressure on the Guardian to hand the Best British Blog prize money to its rightful owner.

She says:

"I think The Guardian really ought to demand repayment of the prize money and give it and the title to Stuart Hughes, whose blog was essentially the runner up. I never liked the fact that the slut won - I had the feeling that she won because of her subject material and the shock value that afforded The Guardian, not because of any inherant worth in her blog. It's like titillation value was more important than ability to touch or affect other people's lives.

"Hughes, on the other hand, has been through and blogged with honesty and emotion about life-changing events - he stepped on a land mine in Iraq and subsequently went through a below the knee amputation. His is a blog which it not only well written, but emotive, interesting, thoughtful and at times even awe-inspiring. He has reached not only other amputees with his writing, but also helped to give non-amputees more understanding of what it's like to go through the loss of a limb. And, of course, he blogs about a wide range of other subjects that makes his blog more well-round and interesting than most.

"Frankly, I think that's far more valuable to the the blogging community than some woman in Manchester pretending to be a call girl in London."

Still no sign of that cheque yet.

Thomas Friedman misses the point completely in the NY Times today, just as his fellow Times columnist
David Brooks did.

He says that by pledging to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, the newly-elected president Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero "is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil...even though those troops are now supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world."

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Zapatero is withdrawing his country's soldiers because his ousted predecesor, Jose Maria Aznar, committed troops to a war opposed by up to 90% of Spanish people, lied to the public about who was behind the Madrid bombings -- and subsequently paid the price at the polls.

That's not appeasement -- it's democracy in action. Friedman, Brooks, et al would do well to scrutinise the validity of their president's war in Iraq, instead of condemning the European fallout.

Kofi Annan realises this. He understands that José María Aznar paid for backing the Iraq war and blaming the terrorist attacks on ETA.

Zapatero does, however, need a crash course in diplomacy. He's stirred things up still further by suggesting American voters should kick out Bush and vote for John Kerry.

I suspect President Bush won't be inviting Mr Z for a cosy chat at the White House anytime soon.

The Times claims to have outed the "call girl" I lost out to in the Guardian's British blog awards.

The Thunderer claims that the anonymous "London hooker" is in fact Sarah Champion, a 33-year-old author from Manchester.

On the weekend, the Times's Sunday edition claimed that "Belle De Jour" is the novelist Christopher Hart.

Whoever he/she is, it seems increasingly likely that (s)he ain't a call girl.

Will the Guardian take back its award and demand the prize money be repaid? I'm watching the mail for my cheque.

The International Federation of Journalists accuses the American authorities in Iraq of attempting to “control and intimidate” the media following the recent detention of Korean journalists in Baghdad.

No prizes for the Economist's coverage of the Madrid bombings, which I've been catching up on this morning. The paper's analysis -- normally razor sharp and right on the money -- was embarrassingly wide of the mark in last week's edition.

The Economist says "the ruling conservatives now seem even more likely to win" the election. Of the Socialists, it says their "chances of taking office next week, in Madrid, look even slimmer.

Er......wrong on both counts.

The article is subscription only so I've uploaded it here as a Word document and here in plain text.

The Economist makes amends, though, with this piece, which is spot on.

With the Madrid bombings story becoming more international in scope I've headed back to London.

Its been an amazing few days marked by a succession of intriguing new developments.

First the Spanish Interior Minister, Angel Acebes, caused an explosion of his own on the eve of the election by admitting what most of us had suspected -- that it was probably Al-Qaida rather than ETA that was behind Thursday's attacks. The timing of the admission -- just a few hours before Spaniards went to the polls -- was breathtaking. It seemed like the act of a government desperate to claw back some credibility, after trying to hold back the full truth for days.

Mr Acebes' words came too late. The Spanish people vented their outrage at being "lied" to as they saw it by Jose Maria Aznar and his Partido Popular by voting the Socialists into power in the general election.

But no sooner had Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero clinched the presidency than he stuck the knife into George Bush and Tony Blair by carrying out a complete U-turn in Spanish foreign policy. He vowed to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30, calling the war a "fiasco" and urging Bush and Blair to engage in some self-criticism. The coalition that waged war against Saddam Hussein exactly a year ago suddenly looked paper thin.

Yesterday, the full extent of the Partido Popular's media manipulation became clearer. Reports came out suggesting that Jose Maria Aznar had personally telephoned newspaper editors to insist that ETA was responsible for the Madrid bombings and journalists from the Spanish news agency EFE demanded the resignation of their editor in chief. They claimed that from the very start they'd been prevented from writing reports suggesting Al Qaida was behind the attacks.

On the one hand, Al Qaida changed the course of the Spanish elections, hardening opposition to a government that waged a war that the overwhelming majority of Spanish people disagreed with.

But the PP could still have won the election if it had toned down its insistence that it was ETA, and not Al Qaida, that had bombed the Madrid trains.

In a sense, then, the events of the last week have been a triumph for democracy -- governments oppose the will of their own people at their peril...and that's something Tony Blair needs to remember as he prepares for his re-election campaign.

Our work in Madrid continues, with the focus of our attention on the fact that the Spanish authorities believe they have the names of at least six and perhaps as many as eight Moroccans who carried bombs onto the trains which exploded last Thursday.

However, the story is slowing shifting away from Madrid and becoming a wider debate about European terrorism -- especially now that the Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir John Stevens has said a terror attack on London is inevitable.

I´ve been predicting the very same thing for some time. My gut feeling is that the attack will either take the form of a Madrid-style series of coordinated bombings in the capital or a suicide bombing in a major London location (such as Oxford Street or a tube train.)

It´s going to happen -- and it´s just a question of when rather than if.

I´m a little slow off the mark with this story from the New York Times because my attention´s been elsewhere.

What I don´t understand is why the white House needs to pay people to pose as journalists for video news releases praising Bush administration policies -- isn´t that what Fox News does already?

Thanks to David for flagging up an organisation I´d never heard of -- Stunts Ability -- an American group which trains amputees and people with "disabilities" for stunts, acting, and effects in the film industry.

I guess we amputees have got less to break or fall off if the stunt goes wrong.

I feel a career change coming on.

To misquote a famous Sun headline "It´s Al Qaeda wot won it."

A few weeks ago, Spain´s ruling Popular Party had a slim lead in the polls and was looking set to win a third term in office.

Then Al Qaeda (probably) carried out a series of bomb attacks in Madrid and by doing so changed the outcome of an election in a major western democracy.

Of course, AQ can´t take all the credit for the Socialist win in last night´s election. The PP´s clumsy handling of the tragedy -- blaming ETA completely and all but ruling out any possible Al Qaeda -- made many Spaniards suspicious that the government wasn´t telling them all the facts.

But even so, anger at the possibility that Spain´s support for the war in Iraq led to the Madrid bombings undoubtedly had a major effect on the outcome of the election.

Spain´s Prime Minister elect, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has already announced a major policy shift, saying he will pull Spanish soldiers out of Iraq if there is no change by the 30 June deadline for the transfer of sovereignty.

And in London Tony Blair must be increasingly concerned over what his support for the war in Iraq will mean for his own electoral chances -- and whether London will be the next target for Al Qaeda´s bombs.

I had planned to give regular updates on developments here in Madrid as the investigation continues into who was responsible for Thursday´s bombing and Spain goes to the polls...but since I arrived just keeping up with the demands of my "real" job has been tough enough.

We´ve been putting in 20 hour days and last night, just as we were calling it a day, a man claiming to be from Al Qaeda admitted responsibility for the attacks, meaning we were up for most of the night covering the development.

To give a sense of the mood here....the sense of solidarity in the immediate aftermath of the attacks has given way to anger and a feeling among many people that Spain´s ruling Partido Popular tried to pin the bombings on ETA when it knew Al Qaeda was most probably blame. The reason for this is that the PP supported the War in Iraq and, some argue, a bombing linked to Spain´s support for the war would have hit its electoral chances. I went to a demo outside the PP headquarters last night in which thousands of people held up banners calling the government mentirosos -- liars -- and urging the government to come clean about who carried out the attacks.

There are two possible outcomes that we´re considering as we plan our post-election coverage:
1) That the PP wins the election and opposition supporters take to the streets again, accusing them of "stealing" the election by hiding the truth about who carried out the train attacks.

2) That criticism of the PP´s support for the Iraq War and the resulting bombings is reflected in the outcome of the vote. If the Socialists win, it could be argued that Al Qaeda influenced the outcome of the election in a major western democracy -- an incredible turn of events.