Activity 19, The Baby Milk Factory
Peter Arnett never voiced doubts on the air about the Iraqi story, and nowhere does he concede that he might have been misled about the baby milk factory. Not only did he find powdered milk packages at the site, he writes, he found "a full schematic plan of a structure called 'Baby Milk Factory' drawn up by the builders, Sodetag Industries of France." After being grilled about the story by a stateside CNN anchor, he recalls, "I felt that even my own news organization was doubtful of my ability to assess the facts." In another interview, Arnett asked, "Why would the Iraqi government go to the trouble of doing all this? Was their nuclear weapons plant described--was it disguised as a bagel? I mean, why go to the trouble?"
There is evidence, in fact, that the Iraqi government did go to the trouble. Alfonso Rojo, a foreign correspondent for the Madrid daily El Mundo, reported in the Manchester Guardian shortly after the war that the "baby milk factory" was a secret location for nuclear weapons research and development. While the equipment in front was French, the nuclear equipment in the rear--overlooked by Arnett's eagle eyes--was Austrian. According to Rojo's sources, the plant "was set up under the guise of a powdered milk factory to prevent a repetition of the Israeli raid on Iraq's main nuclear facility in 1981."
Source: Adapted from David Andrew Price, "Baghdad Gasbag," © The American Spectator, (February 1994): 61-62.
Peter Arnett was allowed into Iraq for the sole purpose of reading government-approved scripts and showing government-approved pictures of civilian casualties.
And now, the first major civilian disaster of the war, the bombing of a Baghdad bunker packed with hundreds of civilians. With footage of this attack, Saddam's strategy gets under way. The resulting shock will increase pressure against the Allied war effort from the Arab street, the Soviets, the U.N. and American protesters.
How to meet the pressure? Not by restricting the press. Arnett and friends have every right to remain in Baghdad and pursue their story. Even in wartime, a free country may censor only military secrets, not disturbing pictures.
We meet the threat by exercising our critical faculties. By any measure, casualties thus far have been proportional to that end. They have indeed been far less than one would have expected of a war against so vast a military machine as Iraq's . . . So long as we scrupulously attack what we reasonably believe to be military targets, the bombing of Baghdad is a cause for sorrow, not guilt.
Source: Adapted from Charles Krauthammer's "Bombing Baghdad: No Cause for Guilt," The Washington Post, February 14, 1991.
Arnett's report did not give the viewer any reason to think that the plant was anything other than what the Iraqi ministry of information told him it was. But the White House, Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, the commander of our forces in the gulf, have all denounced the report as false. They say the plant was actually producing biological warfare weapons. They point out that it was heavily guarded, surrounded by a high security fence and that it was camouflaged. In addition, the Iraqis had claimed that they were getting powdered milk for the plant from Nestle, but Nestle said that was false. They said they had supplied no products to this plant.
A CNN camera crew had been invited to tour this plant last August [1990]. They videotaped workers wearing new uniforms with lettering in English reading, "Iraq Baby Milk Plant." The correspondent, Richard Roth, was suspicious at that time and expressed doubts about the authenticity of the plant when he aired his report. Arnett expressed no suspicions whatever, and gave the world the impression that we had sent two sorties to bomb an infant formula factory.
Source: AIM Report, published by Accuracy in Media, February-B 1991, np.
Return to Activity 19.
Go to the Contents page for International Conflict and the Media.
Go to the Bibliography.