this coupled with receding flood waters and drying riverbeds have starved fish of oxygen. in a statement, the new southwell state department says the hot weather is exacerbating hypoxia. as warmer water holds less oxygen, the cold water, the fish have higher oxygen needs at warmer temperatures. this is the 3rd math die off of fish in the darling river in 2019 nearly 1000000 fish perish them. but the new south wales department of primary industries says the latest is the worth. with hardly any fish being left alive, as if there feel no hopeless 1st said that nick, no one wants to take any responsibility for it. and really all we want is to maintain a healthy river authority, say fish populations, usually boom, during the floods and then fool as fatwas as receipt. but local people blame poor water management. they say more needs to be done to improve the drainage and quality of water to prevent another wool of dead fish. laura han al jazeera.

ah, this is our desert. these, your top stories, at least 15 people have died, aren't as strong. earthquake hit off the coast of ecuador. the magnitude of 6.8 tremor was centered south of the 2nd largest city, k. jak hill, north impacted northern peru. it's 20 years since the stars of the us led invasion of iraq that topple saddam hussein to 3 on 1000 iraqis, killed in the war between 2003 in 2019. the military operation was launched without un support. south korea and japan are pausing north. chris fired a short range ballistic missile towards the sea of the east coast of the korean peninsula. tension in the region has been running highest and south korean. the u. s. began and 11 day joint military exercise on monday. britain's home secretary

swell braverman has visited wonder working to expand a controversial deportation agreement with kid. golly, under the $146000000.00 deal agreed to last year, wanda would accept migrants who arrive in britain without permission. no deportations have taken place yet as rights groups challenge the policy and court. the big point here is that there will be a package of high quality humanitarian support for people who will be relocated to wonder that combined with our robust new laws, will be able, will enable us to break the business model of the people smuggling, gangs. for me, you as president donald trump says he expects to be arrested on tuesday in a case linked to a payment made to porn star stormy daniels from sites of what he called illegal leaks is called on his supporters to purchase. a course in pakistan has council,

former prime minister m ron cons arrest warrants. his supporters clash with police outside the courtroom, islamabad, and outside his home in law, who he faces a number of legal cases, which he says a politically motivated coming up next up front. say, with us, talk to al jazeera, we ask who is really fighting this wolf? russia isn't wagner, or is it the russian military? we listen, we started talking to me on my own so that the i, you know, citizen, he shook them back. we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on al jazeera. 20 years ago this week, the united states launched its invasion of iraq, a move that members of us president george w bush's administration, had been planning for months if not years in the run up to the war, the administration. and it's sarah gets went into overdrive pushing the narrative that iraq and it's leader. saddam hussein posed an immediate and significant threat

to the united states. most of the media uncritically repeated dubious claims about weapons of mass destruction and possible links to al qaeda claims that were thoroughly debunked in the months and years that followed. so how complicit was the media in selling the iraq war to the public and has the press learned any lessons from past failures? that's our discussion this week in it up front special. ah, joining us today is katrina vanden heuvel, publisher and editorial director of the nation norman solomon, founder and executive director of the institute for public accuracy and author of war made easy. how presidents and pundents keep spinning us to death. and peter, o born former chief political commentator for the daily telegraph, an author of the rise of political lying, want to thank you all for joining me on up front. katrina. i'm going to start with you in the lead up to the iraq war. we saw officials and sarah gets up with the

administration of then us president george w bush making the rounds in the press. and during those press rounds, it seemed like they were making a real effort to link the security of the united states post 911 to an imminent threat from iraq. can you walk us through the administration strategy to sell this iraq war to the general public? well, the administration was determined to sell this war, knowing, as we know now that they didn't believe there was a time between the attacks of $911.00 and iraq, but that there was a shock therapy plan to undermine and regime change. iraq. and it was one of the media's greatest failures to date in accepting and failing to be a skeptic. many said norman solomon and others, media ended up being lap dogs, not watch dogs. there was a failure of skepticism. there was an acceptance of what was

a lie. and just one example in the 2 weeks leading up to the war on tv, you had one of say, 200 pundits commentators, military experts, one who raised questions or any skepticism about going to war. that is a failure and it wasn't just fox, but it was the liberal kind of intelligentsia, the david rem next. jeff goldbergs of the atlantic, jonathan shade as recline. these were ones who, including the think tanks in washington, lubricated the way for the lives of the white house. norman, can you pick up on that idea? the katrina is laying out here. i mean there's the bush strategy there. the sarah gets there to people who echo talking points and then there is this press failure that katrina just reference to right. there were some exceptions. there were people who pushed back, there are people who were skeptical, but in general, there seem to be a commitment to blindly repeating the bush administration's talking points with almost no scrutiny. the question to me is why, why would

a media infrastructure allow that to happen? a conformity is so extreme, and when we have exceptions of that's not the essence of propaganda. the essence is repetition of the code, words the catch phrases, the frame of reference. and the assumption is that the united states has the prerogative to try to work its will on the world, including the generally, to the extent that seems strategically advisable and pragmatically possible. and so i think we had not only the careerist conformity and opportunism but also the institutional interlock with what has been called the military industrial complex. and that really continues so that the echo chamber was not simply a problem with individual career drive. but also really the very structure of media, the way that the advertising and the ownership intersects and is interwoven with

the entire political economy and government. i think some of the why can be answered by examining the revolving door not only literally, between media and government officials, but psychologically there is a sort of a worldly gig. it goes around. what do you mean when you say that? you start with the revolving during the world. what do you mean exactly? well, i mean that the personnel often move from government to media and vice versa. and also the assumptions about us prerogatives and policy are also shared in that way. and quite literally, when we talk about the up to the invasion of iraq just about 20 years ago. now we have a situation where there would be from the vice president's office. dick cheney from rumsfeld at the pentagon and so forth, lies planted and leaked to people like judith miller and michael gordon at the new

york times. they would be front page. and then those lies about suppose the weapons of mass destruction in iraq would be cited by bush and cheney and others. see, it's not just us thing. it is the news media. so this recycling was very insidious . peter, there are multiple pieces to these strategies, particularly when you look at them in a global context. in the u. k. the message from prime minister tony blair, at the time, took one slightly different focus than the one in the us. it was less about the imminent threat and the looming danger at the onset and it was more that the country was going to war as a moral duty to liberate iraq from saddam hussein, a dictator with a track record long track record of human rights abuses. blair, even once ro, quote the moral case against the war has a moral answer. it is the moral case for removing saddam. how effective was that

strategy in garnering support for the war? well, really did think that was a moral case for war, but actually he was extremely diligent in inventing all slacks about them, which were then picked up at the nodded states. remember that in britain use the dossier or weapons of mass destruction, notorious clay of 45 minutes of destruction of but at sea saddam had too apparently average chemical weapons on biological weapons on british horses in that time it was, it was a fabrication was the decision to prioritize the moral urgency rather than the urgency of the, of the w m. d. 's. a strategic choice is that when that was more palatable to the

british public was that one that the media was more willing to accept. what, how do you account for the difference making in terms of what they chose to focus on? well lately, because they said also had a parallel strategy of the single kinds of victims of the regime. many of whom are real women, so that let's not get it was a barbarous dictates if they wasn't oh not. and they were on site from a grand saddam was a a noxious figure. the trouble is that wasn't the bronze for invading iraq. i don't recognize what you're saying that the tea party, bishop of britain, this bates, a head of the wall was the production of fabricated evidence that saddam hussein's iraq posed a imminent threat to to international courses. amber, katrina,

keep in mind that this was a time just after 911 when it wasn't unusual at all to see the white house directly responding to journalists who questioned their narrative. they warned them be intimidated. it may accuse them of being unpatriotic. oh, what effect did that strategy have on the circumstances under which journalists were working while trying to do their jobs? well, i think we've seen in times of war or in the run up to war, the ability to quiet a press corps. there were very few questions i remember in the run up to war the iraq or helen thomas is no longer with us. was one of the few was racing tough questions and they continued to marginalize her. but i want to pick up on what norman said. it's not just the individuals, it's the news organizations which maintained a kind of warlike support and didn't raise the tough questions which were clearly

in need of being raised. you had a, judith miller being pumped with emigrate, chalabi is nonsense. but let's look at tv, for example, norman, who was then involved with phil donahue showing emerson, b, c, was essentially ousted, and that wasn't a personal decision that was a corporation, a fearful of taking on a precedence or help me understand how we get there. it makes sense intuitively that a journalist doesn't want to book the system from their news organization because he's stay employed by these news organizations. right? but there are many people who believe that big corporations drive government, not the other way around. why is the big news outlet? why would a news corp, why would it would g e or whoever? right? be afraid of a government be afraid to push back or speak out against the award to be afraid to tell the truth. why are they afraid of administrations when they have those are several reasons mark. one is, you know, in washington often that the,

that conformity drive is not necessarily one of oppression. that's one of seduction . boom journalists have access. they want to be inside. secondly, these news organizations are not, we did a center fold years ago where the news organizations and little cogs in big corporations which have business in washington regulatory and other business. so there's that web and then there's just a mindset. i remember doing chris matthew sunday show and i said i thought iraq was a war of aggression. david gregory, all 65 of them stood up, loomed over me and said, how dare you say that that is on american? i think to be american is to be unyielding in defense of civil rights, civil liberties of justice and of speaking you know the truth to power. the problem is that those in power off and know the truth. norman, you and katrina have started to talk about this relationship between the

professional and political pressure is applied to journalists to get them to conform. and some people who just decided that it was best for their career was just good business to go along with this war. i'm always trying to understand what the ratio is there just a little bit. i mean, you know, how much of this is the, were pressured, our jobs are making us do it. there's a military industrial complex that forces our hand and shapes our consciousness. and how much of it is, you know what that line is shorter. it's much easier to be on the front page if i just take this approach, how much of it is the ladder? because i'm starting to become more and more cynical as i get old. maybe you're becoming more realistic. yeah, the lines get shorter when you get more rewards. there's a lot more goodies there and this is where the line between political analysis and psychoanalysis becomes rather thin. katrina mentioned seduction, and i think it's a very key point because yes,

there are punishments for stepping out of line. and there are a lot of rewards for staying in line and going out on a limb is not very helpful to careers. if you think it's going to crack and there's not a mattress underneath to cushion your fall. and so we have examples in both directions where for instance, david ram that the editor of the new yorker wrote a de facto editorial a couple of months before the invasion of iraq, 20 years ago calling for that evasion in a clarion call piece. and he edited a magazine during the months before the invasion of which repeatedly published articles that claimed that there was a direct tie between saddam hussein and al qaeda and $911.00 complete fall. so as well as we speak, david ram. nick is still the editor of the new yorker. there is no accountability whatsoever. whereas people who did step out of line, for instance,

phil donahue who's show, was cancelled a few weeks before the invasion of iraq, according to lead memos from and b, c. m s n. b c precisely because you know loud and they were the voices of minority voices on the show, but still voices aloud on his program. that was unacceptable. because the memo from nbc that was leaked said that the competitors like fox would be waving the flag as the bombs fell on baghdad. they didn't want to be the network out. peter, what's your assessment of, you know, how much of this is just ra naked, self interest and opportunity versus that kind of broader structural pressure. and then to wasn't really a situation where if you didn't go along with the system, you're was career suicide because in some way that it least it doesn't justify the action, but give some context for it. busy well, i was taken by something which could 3,

that's i just that which was the importance of access. but of course it's a, it's a, it's a story. but i think that was a collapse of the skepticism. and it was also, of course, to follow up another point, but those who oppose the war work targeted in. but in the british pipers, i still remember scott richard. the former weapons inspector was very eloquent. fabrications of the western intelligence agencies, politicians, and the way he was covered and bullied and smeared in the british precedent after the states was, was completely completely horrible. and so it was an unpleasant no mark. what, what strikes me is that there was another phenomenon in the run up to the war,

not just media malpractice, but the new york times called the protests around the world, the other superpower. and there was a real sense of people, a community global community gathering to say no to war. that dissipated when the war began. but i think it remains what strikes me. i don't know if this strikes peter or norman is that we talk a lot about democracy in this country today and salvage in democracy. but at the nation, we've believed for a 150 plus years. that war, the endless war does not permit true democracy at home. yet we have a kind of celebration of george w and the chinese and people who took us into a disastrous ford. there is no accountability in the system. you know, in, with all of these people speaking out against the war with all of this critical analysis, all this deep pushback, norman, why did the media look the other way?

why was there such an effort to silence the resistance? because it's not like it wasn't fair or the key point that katrina alludes to that there was a huge disconnect between what people in the united states around the world wanted certainly many, many of them, including millions on the streets and what was coming from the mass media and i think that's symptomatic of the fact that at the time and especially as a war is launched in the so called professional ethos. if you are pro war, you are quote, objective. if you are anti war, you're biased. and in retrospect then being pro war based on lies means never having to say you're sorry at all. so that is both a history that is distorted in real time or very quickly after, and also pre figurative so the cliche really applies. that the 1st

casualty of war is truth and we have that not only in retrospect, but right now where we have a group think that is continual and the circumstances change, but the dynamic stays was the same. so in 2023, we can have antony blanket and the president of the united states, joe biden, saying that it is absolutely unacceptable for one country to invade another. and yet those 2 false teamed up for bogus hearings of the senate foreign relations committee in the middle of 2002, with biden, as senator chair and blinking as chief of staff railroading through excluding dissenting voices. railroading through the conventional wisdom that was accumulating was essential to invade iraq. so we are in or wealthy and territory

here. and i guess what studying to me peter, you know, i heard katrina talk about you know, being not just shouted down and intimidated, but profoundly rejected by the american media when she has the audacity to call the iraq war a war of aggression. does that happen now? do we see the same kinds of intimidation and final thing? is there more space for descent? is there more space for critical pushback? and is the media willing to cover it? i think the up to that question, no. i except the on the fringes of the internet to work super papers on the scholar during the iraq war, the nation. thank you for educating me. i'll just 0, get home things which at the time with very brightly up against the wall miles eviction about

about the ukraine debates. certainly, britain, i don't want united states. it's actually it's more constrain. it's a i was, was watching the debates in parliament a few weeks ago when the discussion was what to do about your credit. and everybody was driving the escalating, the wall the, the british climate and the labor party, national profit, the labor, the what you loss is a, i d, a name, any, even of the marginal. and i wonder before we go, i wonder how much of it is how we analyze the circumstances. the word think has come up in this conversation multiple times and it keeps lingering in my mind in troubling me a little bit. i think about how, how reporters it would the benefit of some of some hindsight have attempted to make

sense of their failure to cover the iraq war properly. in other situations, an investigative reporter, bob woodward, for example, admitted to not doing enough. but he ultimately blamed once again group think as the reason why he didn't further question the rationale for war writing for bloomberg in 2013 as reclining. another name was come up in this conversation, he apologized for supporting the war. he said he was to yeah, i think that i was a young and i'm a college student. he didn't get drunk at a frat party. he helped beat a war drum. this is something quite different. does this approach demonstrate the media's unwillingness to actually address its failures by framing them as individual choices? right? rather than symptoms of an actual structural problem, i will give you all an opportunity to respond to that. i'll start with you, norman was does something that's not often talked about. it's avoided because the structure of corporate power, interlocked with the military,

industrial complex is very unpleasant. now, you know, repentance and redemption is very mood muted. really in the u. s. i think it was, edward said, who pointed out that one of the huge crimes, if you will, of the western powers in the middle east is a complete lack of remorse. there's still no remorse about what's being done to palestinian people from the united states. certainly not in his real either. and so we have this dynamic going on where people are absolutely encouraged to say, well, we made some mistakes. course other people are suffering and dying as a result of mistakes. but id hope we hopefully do better next time, which reminds me of something i think attributed to mark twain. it's easy to quit smoking. i've done at thousands of times. that best bet that is perfectly at peter

. well it's, it's simply the case that the media will never, ever, on the any circumstances they go anything wrong unless it's too low. and that's a massive arrows of judgment nature. it will, they will never get it. they will always blame somebody else, but implement, implement bagley or somebody else with the media. never make a. i think the structural piece of media power is critical to understand. it's not just individual journalist, but they do have some power as norman was talking about david remich and his cohort . again, the bar to dissent and dissent with reporting and facts and values is not high in this country. a russian poet? yes, guinea, you have to shingle used to say, why is it you love, other countries just dissidence so much and not your own?

and i think there's something to that. and that people inside washington understand, as i said earlier, it's not true oppression suppression, but it is seduction. if you want to be close to the rings of power. and i think that's what we have to work against. and if i might, you know, there are 234 medias in this nano 2nd change in volatile media landscape. and i think a younger generation isn't necessarily watching the old t v. now, will that change mindset? and i do think many people in this country are listening to other things other than the think tanks. the reports did ministration. just to say briefly, the landscape of the world changed as a result of the iraq war in 2007, putin gave this famous speech at the munich security conference, talking about the end of a unipolar world. and i do think the iraq war in many ways in the debacle. the

legacy of debacle has changed the nature of the power coordinates of this world. and that should be remember to as we move into more and more wars and to try and find alternatives to war if possible. katrina norman peter, i want to thank you all for joining me on up front. thank you and give everyone that is our show up front. we'll be back next. ah ah. a coveted beyond well

taken without hesitation. fought and died for pow wow. it finds out, well, we live here, we make the rule, not them. they find an enemy and then they try and scare the people with people and power investigate exploded and questions they use them to be use of our around the cloud on our dcea join the debate. we know that the sector team is empowered by the government and stained by the government. today they are the government africans how security is also global health security. on an online, at your voice, there is no right to defense. there is no right to protest. we can't just keep relying on aid, there has to be some work towards a sustainable economy. at the end of the day, it is ordinary objects that are paying the pri, this dream on al jazeera,

smiling through the coals. tamara and her colleagues at the school for pupils with special needs, wants to pay royce that meets the rising cost of living and keeps people in the profession with these teachers are making sure bad to mom. so i heard what is clearly a sizable demonstration of industry election taking in various parts of the economy, calling on the government for pay arises, that leads inflation. if there's no movement to pay, we are likely to be seeing more protests look just from people like tomorrow, but work is in other key professions who enjoy growth support from the public. ah, 20 years off to the us led invasion of iraq. we look at how washington's unilateral actions of her, the west disability shaped.