John Pilger: The War On Truth: "The director of Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ramonet, summed this up well: "To justify a preventive war that the United Nations and global public opinion did not want, a machine for propaganda and mystification, organised by the doctrinaire sect around George Bush, produced state-sponsored lies with a determination characteristic of the worst regimes of the 20th century."

"The Blair government's attacks on the BBC make sense as part of this. They are not only a distraction from Blair's criminal association with the Bush gang, though for a less than obvious reason. As the astute American media commentator Danny Schechter points out, the BBC's revenues have grown to $5.6bn; more Americans watch the BBC in America than watch BBC1 in Britain; and what Murdoch and the other ascendant TV conglomerates have long wanted is the BBC "checked, broken up, even privatised...All this money and power will likely become the target for Blair government regulators and the merry men of Ofcom, who want to contain public enterprises and serve those avaricious private businesses who would love to slice off some of the BBC's market share." As if on cue, Tessa Jowell, the British Culture Secretary, questioned the renewal of the BBC's charter. The irony of this, says Schechter, is that the BBC was always solidly pro-war."

John Pilger: The War On Truth: "The director of Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ramonet, summed this up well: "To justify a preventive war that the United Nations and global public opinion did not want, a machine for propaganda and mystification, organised by the doctrinaire sect around George Bush, produced state-sponsored lies with a determination characteristic of the worst regimes of the 20th century."

"The Blair government's attacks on the BBC make sense as part of this. They are not only a distraction from Blair's criminal association with the Bush gang, though for a less than obvious reason. As the astute American media commentator Danny Schechter points out, the BBC's revenues have grown to $5.6bn; more Americans watch the BBC in America than watch BBC1 in Britain; and what Murdoch and the other ascendant TV conglomerates have long wanted is the BBC "checked, broken up, even privatised...All this money and power will likely become the target for Blair government regulators and the merry men of Ofcom, who want to contain public enterprises and serve those avaricious private businesses who would love to slice off some of the BBC's market share." As if on cue, Tessa Jowell, the British Culture Secretary, questioned the renewal of the BBC's charter. The irony of this, says Schechter, is that the BBC was always solidly pro-war."