Iraq - Is Jeremy Clarkson Lying?

14:25 Scroll down for updates.

UPDATE Welcome Michelle readers!

Writing in the Times (UK) A A Gill and Jeremy Clarkson, no friend of America, tell of their trip from Baghdad airport to Baghdad using the airport road known as "route Irish".

The Americans didn't have a Black Hawk to spare for the five-minute hop into the Green Zone, so we were going to have to drive it. This is the bit Jeremy swore he'd never do. When you're asked where you draw the line, this is the place to start drawing. Nobody drives into Baghdad if they've not been given a direct order. Even our minder, Wing Co Willox, has never done it. [...]

We travel in a small convoy. Two armour-plated Range Rovers with what they call top cover: Land Rover snatch vehicles in front and behind with a pair of soldiers sticking out the top. Being a human turret is a bad job. "We do this a bit faster than the Americans," a lance corporal tells me as we gingerly pull out of the airport perimeter. That's because the Americans do it in tanks. This road is code-named Route Irish. Guinness World Records has just authoritatively announced that Baghdad is the worst place in the world. Presumably in a photo finish with Stow-on-the-Wold. This 25-minute stretch of blasted tarmac from the airport to the Green Zone is, as Jeremy might say, the most dangerous drive — in the world.

But The Washington Post, no friend of the Administration and against the war, sees the exact opposite.

Easy Sailing Along Once-Perilous Road To Baghdad Airport

BAGHDAD -- It used to be the most dangerous highway in Iraq, five miles of bomb-blasted road between Baghdad International Airport and the capital cityscape. It was a white-knuckle ride, coming or going. To reach Baghdad or leave it, you had to survive the airport road first.

[...]

Then, two months ago, the killings stopped. In October, one person was wounded on the road and no one was killed, according to the U.S. Army, which also calculated the April deaths. The turnaround was owed to simple, boots-on-the-ground military tactics, Army officials said. [...]

Harris started by slowing down the convoys, forcing soldiers to look out and see the passing landscape. Then he sent troops into the surrounding neighborhoods. Barriers went up, preventing cars and trucks from reaching the airport road unless they passed through a military checkpoint. The Iraqi army set up positions and stayed 24 hours a day.

"We've kept up a vigilant presence," Harris said recently. With his convoy parked underneath an overpass along the road, he was making another point: It was safe enough to stop here, to linger, to chat, and a computer screen flashed the statistical evidence. [...]

The men said they had been afraid of this route before they arrived in Iraq. They had heard the news reports about the dangers. But in 10 months, the only enemy fire they have seen on the airport road came after one of the civilian trucks they were escorting broke down, leaving them exposed for three hours. Someone in a passing vehicle fired at the troops, but no one was injured.

"It's pretty much one of the safest roads in Baghdad now. It didn't used to be," Carter said.

Beckett said he felt safe, "as safe as you can feel in Baghdad."

"They used to label this the one most dangerous road in Iraq," Zotter said, waving a white-paper report with all the significant activity from the last 24 hours. "It doesn't say that anymore."

I know who I believe.

Gill and Clarkson have been writing a whole series about the war in Iraq, all pretty damning. I'd say this calls all of their accounts into question and the Times should investigate. After all, the media are well known for faking it.

UPDATE

I meant to add this to the post this morning but had to go out.

They're not the only ones in the media telling porkies about Iraq - the BBC is at it as well.

Paul Adams, the BBC's defence correspondent, accused the BBC of lying in its coverage of the war.

"I was gobsmacked to hear, in a set of headlines today, that the coalition was suffering 'significant casualties'. This is simply not true," Adams said in the memo.

"Nor is it true to say - as the same intro stated - that coalition forces are fighting 'guerrillas'. It may be guerrilla warfare, but they are not guerrillas," he stormed.

"Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving 'small victories at a very high price?' The truth is exactly the opposite. ...

Who indeed?

"The truth is exactly the opposite."

Yes it is.

If you would like comment on the Times article, you can do so here.

If you would like to email the Times and ask if they are going to investigate Clarkson's claims, the link is at the bottom of my blogroll on the left under "UK Media Complaints".

I've emailed the Times and asked if they are going to investigate and if not, why not. I'll let you know if they reply.

UPDATE 14:25

Here's a report from USA Today back in September that contradicts Clarkson.

There hasn't been a suicide car bombing on the road since April, according to U.S. military statistics through August.

U.S. officers attribute the decline to an influx of Iraqi troops who have been stationed at key points along Airport Road, which goes by the military designation Route Irish.

"Route Irish is definitely not the most dangerous road in Iraq any longer, and everyone who uses it knows it," says Lt. Col. Geoffrey Slack, commander of the New York National Guard's 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment.

Everyone except Clarkson that is.

So why would Clarkson make this all up? Because he hates America. Here's what he had to say about Katrina, probably the worst natural disaster to befall America.

Clarkson’s latest column, entitled “Flood that released America’s demons,” ran this past Saturday. His topic, of course, is Katrina, and the blade of his hatred is honed to a superfine edge. We — we Americans that is — are pricked initially as Clarkson wonders how the “most powerful nation on earth could be so crippled by a bit of wind and rain.” Only a few words later we are slashed: “America may have given the world the space shuttle and, er, condensed milk, but behind the veneer of civilization most Americans barely have the brains to walk on their back legs.”

Nice huh?

But Clarkson is intent on building a fictional picture — not only of the aftermath of Katrina but of America, that evil, militaristic, suppressive society across the pond where the “default setting” of public “authorities” is “violence”: [...]

Unfortunately, on the street you’ve got some poor, starving souls helping themselves to a packet of food from a ruined, deserted supermarket. And as a result, finding themselves being blown to pieces by a helicopter gunship. With the none-too-bright soldiers urged on by their illiterate political masters, the poor and needy never stood a chance. It’s easier and much more fun to shoot someone than make them a cup of tea. Especially if they’re black.

And Clarkson continues to build fictional pictures.
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