MEDIA: PROPAGANDA WATCH

Spectator: Not a shred of evidence by Brendan O'Neill

Did Saddam Hussein really use industrial shredders to kill his
enemies? Brendan O'Neill is not persuaded that he did Forget the
no-show of Saddam Hussein's WMD. Even George Bush no longer believes
that they are there. Ask instead what happened to Saddam's 'people
shredder', into which his son Qusay reportedly fed opponents of the
Baathist regime. Ann Clwyd, Labour MP for Cynon Valley and chair of
Indict, a group that has been campaigning since 1996 for the
creation of an international criminal tribunal to try the Baathists,
wrote of the shredder in the Times on 18 March -- the day of the
Iraq debate in the House of Commons and three days before the start
of the war. Clwyd described an Iraqi's claims that male prisoners
were dropped into a machine 'designed for shredding plastic', before
their minced remains were 'placed in plastic bags' so they could
later be used as 'fish food'. Sometimes the victims were dropped in
feet first, reported Clwyd, so they could briefly behold their own
mutilation before death.