The idea of ‘Iraqi state television news broadcasts’ always has the word ‘propaganda’ somewhere close behind it in my mind, but I’m also concerned about the state television broadcasts of a country closer to home. I’m not the only one - there’s plenty of cynics who think that the BBC is just as bad as any foreign (read less-desirable-country) state-run broadcaster. I’m not quite there with the (anti-government / anti-capitalism / anti-globalisation / anti-rational-thought) crowd though, but I still have to take things with a pince of salt. As far as I can make out, there are only three ways that information comes out of Iraq - through reports from the Coalition Central Command (hey, did we not used to fight for the ‘Allies’? Have we lost that many friends that we are now only a ‘Coalition’?), from journalists who are working with the Coalition forces, and from reporters who are ‘in-country’, who are shown around by the Iraqi Ministry of Information.

Not exactly a good set of sources - imagine trying to describe the colours of a painting when you only get to look at it through blue, dark blue, darker blue and dark green tinted goggles. In chemistry terms, there’s an inbuilt bias in the measurements. For example, what is happening in Western Iraq? Last night, the BBC were candid enough to say that they didn’t really know - there’s been a couple of catchily-named airbases that have been taken over, but that’s all that the Central Command have said. But there’s no Western journalists with that set of forces, so who knows what else is going on. Rapid advancement on Baghdad, preparations for an airborne redeployment of forces to Northern Iraq (since Turkey didn’t give in to Coalition bribery), or a whole load of sunbathing? Journalists in southern Iraq get to see forces being held up by pockets of resistance, but from the actions of the particular amoured company (only a handful of soldiers who will guard their words with care), they have to extrapolate whether this constitutes a few score isolated troops, a few score scared troops with loyal Guardsmen keeping them in line, or a few-score troops screening a credible Iraqi force that are quite happy to let the Coalition over-extend themselves northwards and will harrass their supply lines in days to come? After all, trying to prevent the northwards advance is folly, against a force ten times your size and around three decades more advanced (and that’s three decades of the most rapidly advancing military force on this planet, remember). Play it smart - hide in the cities, attack the supply lines, and fight battles that you can win. But I’m getting off topic.

I’m fascinated by what is going on in Iraq. Invading a country and conquering it (choose your own definition of conquering) in around a week is staggering. I’d really like to know what’s really going on though, and I mean that in a kind of omniscient manner. It’s not going to happen though. Although many people will say "Don’t believe everything that you see on TV", I think most of what you see on (British) TV news coverage is the truth. However, it’s not possible for it to be the whole truth, so perhaps we should ‘Remember that there’s a lot more that you don’t see on TV’. Not quite as catchy though, but perhaps more accurate.