Returning to Simpson.

Yesterday my reaction to the BBC's World Affairs Editor's view of the Jordan bombings was swift and visceral. I think that some commenters at Biased BBC were right in saying that it was a piece of propaganda, and I would say that's a tendancy the BBC are showing more and more frequently. Not that I care that much, but it endangers their future in broadcasting.

Trying to drag King Abdullah in as a critic of the US, and effectively blame the US for the bombings in Jordan is really extraordinary. I wonder how such reporting would be viewed by the Jordanian royals, should they encounter it- even though Simpson couched it in diplomatic and ingratiating language.

Simpson claimed that the Al Qaeda bombings represented 'a wave of anger and violence' which had been predicted by Abdullah might be the consequence of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. C'mon Simpson, that's nonsense. Two years have passed since that time, and this is the result, not of the Arab street which was the anti-war argument behind such warnings, but of vicious Islamist terrorism, which was vicious and violent in the region long before 2003.

From Simpson's report you would anticipate that the reaction of the Jordanians would be to blame GWB for Zarkawi's terrorism. In fact it seems rather different to that.

According to NYS's Eli Lake

'Only hours after the suicide bombings Wednesday, citizens marched silently in the streets in solidarity with the victims. Banners damning Mr. al- Zarqawi and his band to hell hang on storefronts and apartment buildings. But the effect of the bombings is perhaps best observed in the hometown of the man who ordered them.

When asked about Zarqa's most notorious son, Mr. Suleiman's craggy face tightened under his red and white headdress and he pointed holes in the air to emphasize his disdain. "Zarqawi is kufr," Mr. Suleiman said, using the Arabic word for a nonbeliever, the preferred slur of Islamic fundamentalists like Mr. al-Zarqawi who favor it when speaking of infidels.'

In other words, what we are seeing is more of the results of the central front in the War on Terror becoming Iraq: the isolation of the Islamofascists within the Islamic world of their origination, as they are forced to do ever more desperate works of evil to preserve their 'face' in the region.

Simpson though is almost blind to this. His notion of reasoning is to say that 'it was King Abdullah, and not Mr Wolfowitz or Mr Feith, who got it right.'

This is madness- Bush-derangement syndrome- such that Simpson has to use a murderous (but one must say isolated, in the Jordanian context) bombing, twisting it unfairly in with Abdullah's reasoning over two years ago, all to bash a couple of people to whom Simpson feels ideological and maybe personal anatagonism.

But then let's move onto John Simpson's notion of 'investigation'. When he talks about Knight-Ridder's report about one of the terrorists who was allegedly involved he says that this man was radicalised in his hatred of the US by events in Fallujah- he attributes this to Knight-Ridder's 'investigation'. In fact, the information was simply direct from the Mufti who was in charge of Fallujah before the US retook it. A great impartial source no doubt who 'said Ali's anti-American stance was hardened after he was detained by U.S. forces in the same mosque where a Marine shot to death an unarmed Iraqi man in a controversial incident captured on video by an embedded American TV journalist. The military ruled the shooting justified.'
KR go onto say that he was aready fighting the US troops at the time.

And there is of course the little problem that the terror attack was in Jordan, and therefore not where the majority of Americans in the ME are to be found at the moment.

All in all then we can see that Simpson's analysis, such as it is, represents a terribly ingrained kind of spin, and journalism as settling scores. If that's what the BBC calls good journalism- and they certainly tried to adorn his article with unadulterated praise from the lickspittle leftists of the online world- then they're finished.

PS- this is a good article from the Weekly Standard dealing with the issue of terrorism and the Iraq war, and the supposed link between the two in terms of events like Jordan. I shudder to think by now what would have happened in terms of the terrorism threat internationally had the US not invaded Iraq. It's the parallel history Simpson and others can conveniently ignore.