Veterans for Common Sense

Kuwait City (Independent) – Tony Blair stood accused last night of misleading Parliament and the British people over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and his claims that the threat posed by Iraq justified war.

Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, seized on a “breathtaking” statement by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that Iraq’s weapons may have been destroyed before the war, and anger boiled over among MPs who said the admission undermined the legal and political justification for war.

Mr Blair insisted yesterday he had “absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction”.

But Mr Cook said the Prime Minister’s claims that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes were patently false. He added that Mr Rumsfeld’s statement “blows an enormous gaping hole in the case for war made on both sides of the Atlantic” and called for MPs to hold an investigation.

Meanwhile, Labour rebels threatened to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for the cardinal sin of misleading Parliament – and force him to answer emergency questions in the House.

Mr Rumsfeld ignited the row in a speech in New York, declaring: “It is … possible that they [Iraq] decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict and I don’t know the answer.”

Speaking in the Commons before the crucial vote on war, Mr Blair told MPs that it was “palpably absurd” to claim that Saddam had destroyed weapons including 10,000 litres of anthrax, up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least 80 tons of mustard gas, sarin, botulinum toxin and “a host of other biological poisons”.

But Mr Cook said yesterday: “We were told Saddam had weapons ready for use within 45 minutes. It’s now 45 days since the war has finished and we have still not found anything.

“It is plain he did not have that capacity to threaten us, possibly did not have the capacity to threaten even his neighbours, and that is profoundly important. We were, after all, told that those who opposed the resolution that would provide the basis for military action were in the wrong.

“Perhaps we should now admit they were in the right.”

Speaking as he flew into Kuwait before a morale-boosting visit to British troops in Iraq today, Mr Blair said: “Rather than speculating, let’s just wait until we get the full report back from our people who are interviewing the Iraqi scientists.

“We have already found two trailers that both our and the American security services believe were used for the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons.”

He added: “Our priorities in Iraq are less to do with finding weapons of mass destruction, though that is obviously what a team is charged with doing, and they will do it, and more to do with humanitarian and political reconstruction.”

Peter Kilfoyle, the anti-war rebel and former Labour defence minister, said he was prepared to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for misleading Parliament. Mr Kilfoyle, whose Commons motion calling on Mr Blair to publish the evidence backing up his claims about Saddam’s arsenal has been signed by 72 MPs, warned: “This will not go away. The Government ought to publish whatever evidence they have for the claims they made.”

Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: “No weapons means no threat. Without WMD, the case for war falls apart. It would seem either the intelligence was wrong and we should not rely on it, or, the politicians overplayed the threat. Even British troops who I met in Iraq recently were sceptical about the threat posed by WMD. Their lives were put at risk in order to eliminate this threat – we owe it to our troops to find out if that threat was real.”

But Bernard Jenkin, the shadow Defence Secretary, said: “I think it is too early to rush to any conclusions at this stage; we must wait and see what the outcome actually is of these investigations.”

Ministers have pointed to finds of chemical protection suits and suspected mobile biological weapons laboratories as evidence of Iraq’s chemical and biological capability. But they have also played down the importance of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Earlier this month, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, provoked a storm of protest after claiming weapons finds were “not crucially important”.

The Government has quietly watered down its claims, now arguing only that the Iraqi leader had weapons at some time before the war broke out.

Tony Benn, the former Labour minister, told LBC Radio: “I believe the Prime Minister lied to us and lied to us and lied to us. The whole war was built upon falsehood and I think the long-term damage will be to democracy in Britain. If you can’t believe what you are told by ministers, the whole democratic process is put at risk. You can’t be allowed to get away with telling lies for political purposes.”

Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, said MPs “supported war based on a lie”. He said: “If it’s right Iraq destroyed the weapons prior to the war, then it means Iraq complied with the United Nations resolution 1441.”

The former Labour minister Glenda Jackson added: “If the creators of this war are now saying weapons of mass destruction were destroyed before the war began, then all the government ministers who stood on the floor in the House of Commons adamantly speaking of the immediate threat are standing on shaky ground.”

The build-up to war: What they said

“Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal lethal weapons” – George Bush, Us President 18 March, 2003.

“We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd” –
Tony Blair, Prime Minister 18 March, 2003.

“Saddam’s removal is necessary to eradicate the threat from his weapons of mass destruction” – Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary 2 April, 2003.

“Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit” – Tony Blair 28 April, 2003

“It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy them prior to the conflict” – Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary 28 May, 2003.

“Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.”

George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

Here is the link to the full text:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

U.S. troops trying to quell lawlessness seven weeks after Saddam Hussein’s downfall have come under attack in several parts of central Iraq in the past few days.

A farmer said he saw a U.S. helicopter go down near Hit, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Wednesday, although the crash was unconfirmed.

Another resident, 24-year-old Amer Aziz, who said he represented the young men of Hit, told Reuters the trouble began when police and American troops began a house-to-house search for guns on Wednesday morning.

“The Iraqi police were very rough with our women,” he said. “They forced their way into houses without knocking, sometimes when women were sleeping. This is a very conservative town.”

Uproar ensued in the Sunni Muslim town of 155,000 as angry residents surged into the streets, burning police cars and throwing stones and handmade grenades at the Americans.

Aziz said a parley had taken place in the afternoon, when townsfolk told the Americans to leave or face suicide attacks.

“I convinced the young men to withdraw and then the Americans withdrew,” he added.

Another young man, 26-year-old Ahmed al-Mashhadawi, said a hand grenade had been thrown at a U.S. tank as it left town. “We killed one soldier and wounded others,” he said.

The U.S. military said on Wednesday it was checking what happened in Hit, but has not confirmed any casualties.

One resident, Adnan Mizdar, said U.S. troops had fired during the clashes, wounding a 10-year-old boy and two other people. Residents said they had already left hospital.

“We are not Saddam’s men,” said a man named Abu Qasim. “Saddam is gone, but we want the occupation to end. The Americans must know they can never come back to town.”

He said the Iraqi police, who were all locals, had left with the U.S. troops. The Iraqi flag was still flying over the burned-out police station. Residents said they had taken its contents to a mosque for safekeeping.

U.S. soldiers wearing chemical suits and gas masks were deployed some five miles outside Hit on Thursday, with seven tanks and a score of military vehicles.

It was not clear why the troops had donned protective gear. No chemical or other banned weapons have been found in Iraq since the United States and Britain invaded on March 20.

A farmer said he had seen a U.S. helicopter crash about five miles from the town at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday. Another helicopter had lifted the wreckage away.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday it had no information on a media report that a U.S. helicopter had gone down in the area.

The U.S. Central Command said a U.S. soldier was killed when he came under hostile fire in Iraq on Thursday. The Centcom statement did not give the location of the shooting.

In other recent incidents, two U.S. soldiers were killed and nine wounded in an ambush near Falluja, west of Baghdad, on Tuesday. Six days earlier, American soldiers killed two Iraqis who fired anti-tank rockets at an armored vehicle in the city.

On Monday, two U.S. soldiers were killed and four wounded in two ambushes, one in Baghdad and one north of the capital.

“The war has not ended,” the commander, Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, said after a U.S. soldier was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while traveling in supply convoy north of Baghdad — the ninth U.S. service member killed in Iraq this week.
McKiernan, briefing reporters in the Iraqi capital, described the sporadic attacks as a new phase of the military conflict.

“Decisive combat operations against military formations has ended, but these contacts we’re having right now are in a combat zone, and it is war, and they are members of [Saddam’s] regime that must be removed.”

Recent days have seen a sharp escalation in attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.

McKiernan said the attacks were “being perpetrated by enemies whose future is gone. … The rest of the population knows that they were thugs under his regime, and they know — and the Iraqi population knows — that they have no future in this country.”

On Thursday, a U.S. soldier was killed when his convoy came under fire from a rocket-propelled grenade on a supply route through Iraq. The Pentagon said the soldier, who was not identified, was part of a convoy north of Baghdad.

TROOPS’ STAY EXTENDED

In response to the recent violence, McKiernan said he may soon send more troops into combat operations.

McKiernan said the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which had been planning to return to the United States in June, would remain in Iraq until commanders decided it was no longer needed.

With recent attacks against U.S. soldiers, he said, there were no immediate plans to return the unit to its headquarters at Fort Stewart, Ga.

“Now that the 1st Armored Division has assumed the responsibility for the Baghdad area, I’m working with the V Corps commander on different options,” McKiernan said. The V Corps is an umbrella operation that coordinates U.S. forces in Iraq.

“If we need to apply some of the combat power of the 3rd Infantry Division elsewhere in Iraq, we will certainly not hesitate to do that,” McKiernan said.

DIVISION’S READINESS QUESTIONED

But senior leaders and logistics experts in the 3rd Infantry said most of the division was not ready for combat. They complained that they had received almost no spare parts to repair damaged tanks and armored personnel carriers — what the military calls Class IX supplies — since they left Kuwait on March 22.

“He is going to get U.S. soldiers needlessly killed if he expects us to go into battle,” a senior noncommissioned officer in the 3rd Infantry said of McKiernan. He spoke on condition that he not be named for fear of retribution.

The 3rd Infantry’s supply line was a constant problem during initial fighting for control of Iraq. After the fall of Baghdad, senior officers determined that the division would be leaving within weeks and that its vehicles would be taken out of service, so they never filled orders for parts.

A battalion operations officer said that he had more than 2,600 parts on order and that all the tanks in his unit needed extensive repairs. Another commander said his Bradley fighting vehicles all had two-page lists of parts that were ordered but were never delivered.

“None of my Bradleys are fully mission capable,” said Capt. Chris Carter, an infantry company commander.

Maintenance personnel reported that the treads that propelled tanks forward were worn and that the vehicles’ suspensions were badly damaged. That means the tanks could easily be immobilized in battle and could not move well under fire.

A brigade-level officer wrote a four-page letter to the division commander detailing why his unit was not ready for combat operations, a senior officer said on condition of anonymity.

Asked about spare parts for the division, McKiernan insisted that plenty of supplies were available.

“I wouldn’t say they are lacking repair parts. I would say a lot of them were shot up during the campaign, a lot of them have had to have maintenance performed on them,” he said. “Those soldiers, if they are asked to go and occupy another piece of ground in Iraq and conduct combat operations, they will be all over it.”

Officers in the division said they would follow any orders, but all expressed concern about the possible cost.

PALESTINIAN MISSION RAIDED

In another indication of growing security concerns, U.S. troops raided the Palestinian Authority’s mission in Baghdad on Wednesday and arrested 11 people after ransacking the building, a Palestinian official said Thursday. A top U.S. general said eight people were arrested.

The detained men included Charge d’Affaires Majah Abdul Rahman, who was running the mission in the ambassador’s absence, said Mohamed Abdul Wahab, an official at the mission. They were taken to a U.S. base in the center of the city and have not been released, he said.

“They even took all of our water bottles and food cans,” Wahab said. “They behaved like common thieves.”

U.S. troops have conducted numerous sweeps against suspected criminals and loyalists of Saddam’s regime. Wednesday’s raid was believed to be the first such action against a foreign diplomatic mission.

It was part of a larger operation that saw hundreds of U.S. soldiers sweep through an area of western Baghdad that had seen five attacks on U.S. troops in the past few days.

On Sunday, one soldier died in an attack in the area, after the Humvee in which he was traveling was hit by explosive placed along a highway. At least five soldiers were injured in the incidents, which included two grenade attacks on a police station, and three highway attacks on moving U.S. military vehicles.

Military officials said they did not believe all the incidents were connected.

Baghdad, Iraq (AP) – Ask any soldier in Iraq with a 3rd Infantry Division patch on the shoulder how it’s going, and the reply will be some version of the following four words: ”Ready to go home.”

The thrill of victory that followed the division’s capture of Baghdad in early April has faded. As Iraq’s summer heat builds, so do soldiers’ anxieties.

After more than six months in Kuwait and Iraq, tempers have begun to flare, both among the soldiers themselves and with the civilians they encounter. Adding to the worries, eight American soldiers have died in Iraq since Sunday in attacks, accidents and explosions, including two killed by gunmen early Tuesday in Fallujah.

”We were told that once we entered Baghdad and we won the war they would send in other units to do the peacekeeping,” one senior soldier said on condition of anonymity. ”Those who did the killing should not be the ones keeping the peace. They need to send us home.”

But more than six weeks after the fall of Baghdad, the troops who fought from the Kuwait border all the way to the capital are patrolling the streets. Troops from the 1st Armored Division have arrived in recent days, but the commander of the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based 3rd Infantry said he doesn’t know when his unit will be allowed to leave.

”We’ll continue to do our mission here until we are relieved. I don’t have any time estimate on that, but hopefully it’ll be soon,” Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III said. He said the redeployment would be discussed when he meets with Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of all coalition forces in Iraq.

Blount and other officers say that their men are ready to accept any mission given them, even if that means staying in Iraq until August. But unit commanders say privately that morale is plummeting, especially as repeated rumors of an imminent departure fail to materialize.

There are indications that the stress of combat, compounded by weeks of chasing looters and dealing with Iraqi demonstrators, has affected the troops. Leaders report more heated arguments between soldiers and more soldiers declining to re-enlist.

”This is when leadership gets tough,” Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp recently told his officers in Task Force 4-64, the unit that captured the two main presidential palaces when U.S. troops entered Baghdad on April 7.

U.S. Army psychiatrists who have been screening troops for combat stress have told many soldiers to seek help when they get home, but none know when that will happen. Soldiers have also been quicker to lose their tempers in dealing with Iraqi civilians, the troops said.

Spc. Robert Blake of Westover, Penn., said that while his experience as a peacekeeper in Kosovo helps him keep his cool, some soldiers in Baghdad still have a combat soldier’s mindset.

”Just coming out of combat it sounds like a crazy thing to tell someone, but I found myself telling people: `Relax, dude not everybody here is out to kill you,”’ said Blake, 20. ”There are some people that no matter what they were doing, they wouldn’t lighten up.”

Blount said the Army is working to improve living conditions for the soldiers, making sure none are still living in tents and that they have running water and electricity. He said they have also begun distributing ice to soldiers to help keep them cool during walking patrols with more than 30 pounds of combat gear in 100-degree heat.

One reason some senior officers cite for keeping the division in Iraq was the widespread looting and lawlessness in Baghdad that began as U.S. troops took control of the city. But as security is restored and more troops arrive, commanders hope the 3rd Infantry will be allowed to return home.

A majority of veterans hospitals do not offer all of the long-term care services mandated by a 1999 law, according to a new report from the General Accounting Office.

The Veterans Millennium Health Care and Benefits Act of 1999 required that the Veterans Affairs Department provide three noninstitutional or off-site health care services for veterans: adult day health care, geriatric evaluation, and respite care, or short-term, temporary care. But a recent GAO investigation found that the majority of VA medical facilities either did not offer the services or only provided a service for a portion of the geographic area they served.

“VA’s lack of emphasis on increasing access to noninstitutional long-term care services and a lack of guidance on the provision of these services have contributed to service gaps and individual facility restrictions,” GAO said in its report, “VA Long-Term Care: Service Gaps and Facility Restrictions Limit Veterans’ Access to Noninstitutional Care” (03-487).

While most of VA’s 139 facilities offered other long-term care services, such as home health care and home health aid services, just 33 offered respite care, one of the services mandated by the Millennium Act. More than 50 VA health facilities did not offer geriatric evaluation and more than 40 did not offer adult day health care.

And though VA caregivers can arrange for veterans to receive the mandated services through other sources using a case management system, VA leadership has yet to issue guidance on that approach and does not monitor whether its facilities are even taking advantage of that option, GAO found.

“VA has not provided sufficient guidance to clear up confusion at facilities as to how noninstitutional respite care services are provided or to make clear which home health services facilities must provide,” the report said.

The watchdog agency also discovered that some VA facilities limited access to the three services by imposing their own eligibility criteria for accessing the services, such as whether or not the veteran’s disability is due to a service-related injury. “These restrictions conflict with VA eligibility standards and result in inequitable access for veterans enrolled at these facilities,” the report said.

To remedy the situation, GAO recommended VA officials specify in department policy which services facilities are required to provide, ensure that hospital officials adhered strictly to VA’s eligibility standards, and tweak performance measurements to guarantee that VA facilities are providing access to all the required long-term care services.

In a written response, VA Secretary Anthony Principi said he agreed with GAO’s recommendations.

tballard@govexec.com

To reivew the GAO report, go to this link:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03487.pdf

Hundreds of thousands of veterans of earlier U.S. military conflicts might also no longer qualify for VA health care or might be forced out by rules proposed by the Bush administration to relieve an overburdened system. The changes would increase veterans’ out-of-pocket costs by increasing co-payments for out-patient care and prescription drugs, as well as require many to pay a $250-a-year enrollment fee just to stay in the VA health-care system.

That, critics say, will force many veterans to say goodbye to a health-care system they had assumed would be available all of their lives.

VA officials say they must focus on veterans with the greatest needs – those with the most serious service-related illnesses and injuries and those too poor to afford other health care.

But many veterans – and the organizations that represent them – say it is a broken promise.

“Young men and women go off and fight for their country and are told that their needs will be taken care of,” said Ronald Conley, national commander of the 2.8-million member, Indianapolis-based American Legion. “To change the rules on them when they get back is wrong.”

The Bush administration’s proposed changes cut off enrollment for veterans who make more than about $24,000. Those who are above that threshold and are already enrolled in the system would have to pay an annual $250 fee to keep their health-care benefits. In addition, the Bush administration is proposing increasing co-payments for higher income patients from $15 to $20 per outpatient visit and from $7 to $15 for prescription drugs.

The Republican-controlled Congress recently passed a budget for veterans’ health care of about $30 billion for 2004, an increase of about $3.4 billion over this year’s budget. [Republicans had earlier voted to cut $25 billion.] But the Democrats say some of this money will have to come from co-payments and the veterans using the system.

“They are squeezing people out of the system and making those left behind pay,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “It’s just wrong.”

Republicans in Congress say Democrats like Strickland are misleading veterans, saying that the Bush administration proposals are not included in the budget document and aren’t likely to be passed on their own. It could be fall before any decisions are reached.

Strickland said Congress would need to approve increases in co-payments, but the VA could act on its own on re-enrollment fees.

In 1996, Congress mandated that the VA adopt an enrollment system to manage health care for veterans. It gave the VA secretary the power to decide each year whether to continue to allow all veterans to enroll.

What the VA came up with is an eight-tiered system that ranks veterans in terms of their medical needs. The “Priority 1” category includes veterans with service-related disabilities rated 50 percent or more disabling. At the bottom is the “Priority 8” category – veterans without service-related disabilities who are above the $24,000 income threshold.

On Jan. 14, 2002, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi issued a directive saying that Priority 8 veterans could no longer enroll for VA health care. The VA, he said at the time, “is maintaining its focus on the health care needs of its core group of veterans – those with service-connected disabilities, the indigent and those with special health-care needs.”

It is a rule that will exclude an estimated 173,000 veterans.

Strickland recently asked the House Committee on Government Reform what impact the rule changes would have on VA health in Ohio. The study estimated that about 4,000 would be prevented from enrolling and another 41,000 might be forced out of the system because of the additional out-of-pocket costs.

“Me and the president and every other politician I know loves to have his picture taken with a group of veterans in uniform; we’ll all be doing it on Memorial Day weekend,” Strickland said. “But this is the reality.”

Tim Culbertson, a 50-year-old Army veteran from Cheviot who was wounded in Vietnam, has a VA disability rating of 50 percent and receives regular treatment at the VA Medical Center in Cincinnati. Culbertson often steers veterans through the maze of red tape, helping them get medals that were earned but never awarded and hooking them up with the VA system. He said he believes excluding veterans from health care is wrong.

“This country is sending billions to Turkey, and they wouldn’t even let us station troops there,” Culbertson said. “And we’re going to have people coming back from Iraq who will probably never get VA health care. There’s something wrong with that picture.”

The VA will give returning Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans something the veterans of the first Persian Gulf War did not get – two years of free VA medical care. But, after that, they will have to show service-related disabilities and meet the other requirements to keep the service.

Conley, the American Legion’s national commander, said he believes the two years of free health care may not do the Iraq veterans much good.

“It took longer than two years after Vietnam for Agent Orange to start showing up, or PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome),” Conley said. “We don’t know what some of these young soldiers and Marines might develop somewhere down the line because of their service over there. Two years is not enough.”

It is not just recent veterans who might be excluded. World War II veterans are now elderly, and most have some kind of health problem – service related or not. The Vietnam generation of veterans is reaching its 50s now – an age when health problems become more common.

Conley, the American Legion commander, said he talked to a WWII veteran in Tennessee last week who was a prisoner of the Japanese and a survivor of the Bataan Death March. He was rated as having a disability when he left the service, but now, in his early 80s, he needs health care and doesn’t qualify because of his income and his zero percent disability rating.

“This is a man who made it through the Bataan Death March, who saw all kinds of hell serving his country,” Conley said. “And now they’re telling him he can’t enroll for health care. It’s crazy.”

Focusing on those who need help the most, VA officials say, will help relieve what has been a chronic problem at the nation’s VA hospitals – long waits for veterans seeking health care. In July 2002, the VA reported to Congress that 310,000 veterans nationwide had waited six months or more for an initial appointment with a VA doctor. From 1996 to 2002, the number of patients being treated by the VA jumped by 54 percent.

The priority system is aimed at cutting those long lines and long waits, but some are not sure that the priority system is doing what the VA intended it to do – get the care to those who need it the most.

“The priority system looks good on the outside, but it doesn’t always work that way,” said David Gorman, executive director of Disabled American Veterans (DAV), an advocacy group that began in Cincinnati 83 years ago. “VA doctors are like doctors anywhere. They treat the people who come in the door. They don’t worry about who is ranked where. They worry about treating patients.”

Gorman, a Vietnam veteran who has a VA disability rating of 100 percent, receives VA treatment.

“I go to the clinic, and I’m sitting there next to some 82-year-old World War II guy who has no service-related disability but who is obviously hurting, and I feel bad about going in to see the doctor ahead of him,” Gorman said.

E-mail: hwilkinson@enquirer.com

Mr Bell said the proprietors had never taken the sorts of risks they had urged on British service personnel in calling for the war.

Speaking during a debate at the festival on media coverage of the war in Iraq, Mr Bell, who was a commentator for Channel 5 during the conflict, also attacked Mr Murdoch’s Sky News (in the UK) for the amount of speculation it indulged in and for “reporting rumours as fact”.

Mr Bell said: “The thing that worries me most about the coverage was its feverishness. The networks became rumour bazaars. There was spin and manipulation. Our political and military leaders also have an obligation not to deceive.”

Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, told the thousand-strong audience that technological developments had enabled the immediate transmission of pictures and information.

They allowed the internet distribution of thousands of sources of information, including from the so-called Baghdad Blogger.

Another aspect of this war was the use of reporters who stayed with particular troops during the conflict, “embedded” in military units.

“It would be churlish to rubbish the concept of embedded reporters, having asked for it in previous conflicts,” he said.

He added that members of the Household Cavalry had been so taken by the coverage of the reporter Audrey Gillan that they claimed they had become Guardian readers.

A retired general, Arthur Denaro, was sympathetic to the media’s problems but said constant, immediate transmission of news had left the public “a touch depressed”.

Stephen Marshall, creative director of the Guerrilla fresh news Network website, based in the US, argued that there had been a higher level of debate and intelligence in the British media coverage compared with the output from the American side.

“In the US it tends to be more derivative, focusing on the lowest common denominator,” he said.

Mr Marshall stirred up debate with one member of the audience when he pointed out that the federal communications commission – the American regulatory body for the media – was chaired by Michael Powell, who is the son of Colin Powell, the serving US secretary of state.

The audience member claimed it was unfair to imply bias within the organisation just because of a close family relationship.