Daily Mirror: calling for 7/7 investigation or UK 9/11 Commission whitewash ?

This Old Brit reminds us that yesterday, the Daily Mirror ran a large editorial calling for a public inquiry into the London bombings last year.

In this, the Mirror covered the story of Rachel North, well known for her campaigning for a full inquiry into the 7/7 tragedy of which she is survivor.

A full public inquiry is long overdue and indeed it is difficult not to be alarmed at the Blair goverment's ongoing efforts to avoid this, but there were a number of things in the Mirror coverage that people should be equally concerned about, and knowing that an inquiry will eventually be inevitable, the direction and template for such an inquiry may already be being shaped:

What follows are some modified and expanded comments I left over at Richard's (This Old Brit's) blog:

The Mirror's own commentary advocates a 9/11 Commission-style investigation, almost promoting it as a gold standard that should be replicated here for the 7/7 bombings:

"The model should be America's 9/11 Commission into the al-Qaeda assault on the Twin Towers" (Daily Mirror 4/7/2006)

The 9/11 Commission just assumed the validity of this assertion made early on, so we are already off to a shaky start.

But there are some better parallels: The 9/11 Commission was eventually put together after the families campaigned for it and against enormous resistance from the Bush administration, but as soon as it was agreed things started to take on a downward slant and it became clear where it was headed.

Henry Kissinger was intended to head the commission, which the New York Times noted as perhaps being a means to contain the investigation. When Kissinger didn't work out, they actually picked someone even worse in the form of Philip Zelikow.

To those who haven't had a chance yet, do read about Philip Zelikow, it will make you shudder with disbelief. The familes (sadly unsuccessfully) tried to get rid of Zelikow.

It was Zelikow's staff that did by far the majority of the work, not Kean, Hamilton etc (who are worthy of great criticism in their own right), while early on... 'commission member Max Cleland resigned, condemning the entire exercise as a "scam" and "whitewash"' ¹

Now, there were some very interesting things that slipped out of the 9/11 Commission, but by and large, things were either lied about, grossly distorted or evidence outright ignored or denied to come up with a way of rubber stamping the official story already out there, not 'investigating it'. More worryingly the commission's report was used as a tool to manufacture a political mandate, to reinforce the direction of the administration of 'a world changed' scenario.

Some of the US families have noted it leaves them with more questions than answers and that is being very polite. For many others, the 9/11 Commission report is regarded as the sinister whitewash of our times surpassing the Warren Commission into JFK, indeed it is difficult to recognise this description from the Mirror,

"Even President Bush finally acknowledged, after taking a similar tack, that there needed to be a 9/11 Commission. The conclusions ended many of the myths around the September attacks. And the American people were reassured" ²

This statement is just false, a recent Zogby poll showed that less than half of Americans effectively accepted the 'findings' of the 9/11 Commission, who's conclusions were identical to those proposed in the hours and days after 9/11, a point of which the Daily Mirror are well aware as I (and many others) emailed the Zogby story to them at the time.

It troubles me that no distinction is being made between the families in the US who campaigned for an inquiry and the 9/11 Commission itself. There is no mention in the Mirror that the 9/11 Commission is a widely criticised affair, ranging from dangerous whitewash to malevolent story telling machine for US empire. So concerning were it's problems David Ray Griffin wrote a book about it, the 9/11 Commission report: Ommissions and Distortions.

My strong concern is that the UK is being led down an ally; in pointing to America as an example of where a commission was set up at public request, it is being nudged to effectively replicate the 9/11 Commission, where it is being wrongly held up by the press and some politicians as an example to follow, but if you follow that route then you'll just have something that will appease a lot of the tabloid press, will reinforce a lot of the worst political myths, but will horrify, and be denounced by, anyone who has actually looked at it.

The tragic and worrying real parallel which tends to get obscured by the media is both the US and UK goverments put blocks on investigations and that familes who rightly wouldn't take no for an answer pushed for it, but in the case of the US, the resulting 9/11 Commission was far from satisfactory to put it extremely mildly.

Victims and families, the UK and Rachel deserve better than a 9/11 Commission.


2. Greengrass in the Mirror.

And if people wanted a sign that they are being dangerously mislead into a corrupt UK 9/11 Commission which will do everything it can to avoid genuine investigation while fabricating a mythical politcal zeitgeist, then they can look no further than Flight 93 propagandist Paul Greengrass's comments in the Mirror:

"It was called the 9/11 Commission Report. Without it, we could never have reconstructed what happened aboard the hijacked passenger jets, nor even begun to understand the complex forces that led up to the attacks on September 11th 2001 [..]

It stands today as a powerful and impressive exercise in accountability from a society mature enough to know that when faced with a calamity on the scale of 9/11, government's first task is to find out what happened and why"

The fact they are rolling out Greengrass who is waving the 9/11 Commission report as if it were some authoritative, reliable account is extremely worrying. People are effectively being prepared for another war on terror/Clash of Civilizations mandate-making novel straight out of the CFR and piped through a collection of compromised cronies like Kean and Hamilton, or in this case their UK equivalents. And if previous regime investigations into itself are anything to go by like the Hutton report it doesn't bode well.


3. The Mirror talked about 'Al Qaeda (sympathisers) trying to infiltrate MI5'

I don't even know how the Mirror could print this garbage that's been handed to them. It's just nonsense. It may be code for MI5 trying to infiltrate itself.

Thanks to Rachel and Richard

London bombings Daily Mirror Rachel North 9/11 Commission 7/7