Cockburn looks back at the Iraq war

There is a good piece in the Indy this morning by Orwell winner Patrick Cockburn on the reporting of the Iraq war by journalists.

Could somebody outside Iraq reading the newspapers, watching television or listening to the radio have got a real understanding of what was happening in the country? Was the news reporting better than it had been in Vietnam to which it is often compared?

he asks and he makes the point that

The most frustrating moment for me and many other reporters came as the war escalated in 2004. It soon became clear that the US-led occupation forces controlled only islands of territory and their military position was deteriorating. But George Bush and Tony Blair were able to maintain that the war was confined to only four out of 18 provinces of Iraq and the extent of the violence was being exaggerated by the media. This was quite untrue, but journalists could not disprove it because if we ventured into these supposedly pacific provinces we stood a good chance of being kidnapped or decapitated.