Politicians, generals and authors are all fighting the fiercest battle of all - to make us believe their side of the story
John Sutherland Monday September 30, 2002 The Guardian
Here's one for Tony's dossier. You have this gun-toting, porkpie-hat-wearing warmonger. He instructs his scientists secretly to develop weapons of mass destruction - specifically four million anthrax bombs, designed to kill non-combatant ("enemy") civilians - old men, women, children, household pets. The lot. We are talking Armageddon.
But what evildoer are we talking about? More clues. Cigars. Roy Jenkins. Albert Finney unbuttoning his flies.
How do I know that Winston Churchill wanted to loose hideous WMDs on innocent German civilians? Because Mike Davis says so three times in his latest, post 9/11 jeremiad, Dead Cities, on pages 33, 57 and 82.
According to Davis, Churchill was, as the war drew to an end, "exasperated" by Germany's V-rockets, against which the British homeland had no defence.
He had the RAF draw up "a bombing plan for the use of anthrax against six German cities. The expectation was that 40,000 of the 500lb projectiles could kill at least half the population 'by inhalation', and many more would die later through skin absorption." Twelve million casualties were projected. Two holocausts. Never in the field of human conflict, has one man planned to poison so many. Fat genocidal bastard.
Churchill, Davis informs us, was gung ho. He was (reluctantly) talked out of his anthrax final solution by Franklin Roosevelt. By way of compensation, the president permitted his closest ally a super-raid on Berlin calculated to " 'castrate' 275,000 Berliners (dead and injured)". Homicidal bastard.
Davis shot to bestselling fame with City of Quartz (1990) whose apocalyptic prophecies about Los Angeles were confirmed by the Rodney King riots two years later. He is nowadays America's hottest "scholarly" writer, a hero of the radical left. His books sell in millions. Since City of Quartz, Davis has had his pick of plum university jobs and was awarded a MacArthur "genius" fellowship (that's the one where they ask you to please donate your sperm to posterity).
Davis's anthrax allegations refer us (three times) to an article by Barton Bernstein, titled Churchill's Secret Biological Weapons, and published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1987. Clinching proof, the lay reader will think.
And will think wrongly. Bernstein's article was authoritatively contradicted in the same journal, six months later. The truth was as follows: under the V-weapon assault (which he feared might eventually deliver chemical payloads) the PM asked for a feasibility study on poison gas bombs. His experts were discouraging. They added an appendix (unasked for by Churchill) saying that biological weapons were similarly not on. Stick to high explosive, they advised. Davis's anthrax allegations are, as we scholars like to say, a crock of shit.
Roy Jenkins gives the episode a throwaway sentence on page 747 of his book, which is what it's worth.
Why does Professor Davis not cite the contrary evidence, which he must know? Two reasons. Lies, as Oscar Wilde might say, are more thrilling than truth. And, as publishers like to say, they sell more books.
Secondly, we are, post 9/11, deep into "first casualty" territory. Over the next few months, the mother of all battles will be fought, on the home front, for public opinion. Untruth will reign.
We shall hear again about babies being thrown into hospital furnaces by laughing Republican Guards. George Galloway will moisten our eyes with images of Iraqi children cowering under their beds as RAF "dive bombers" flatten their homes.
Both sides will invent their respective Dr Evils. Monster Saddam on one side, Monster Bush and Mini-Monster Blair on the other. Maxi-Monster Osama somewhere in the background. And, in passing, Monster Winnie (so that's what you mean when you invoke the "Churchillian spirit", Mr Rumsfeld).
Tell me lies about Vietnam, we used to chant, with Adrian Mitchell. The Iraqi lie factories are in full production. Davis has his product out early. So too, cynics will say, has Tony Blair.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4511288,00.html
