Brendan O'Neill

26 June 2002
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The story about Iraq storing dead babies' bodies so that it then can parade them through the streets in propagandistic mass funerals has united everyone from gore merchants to right-wing journalists to supposedly left-wing bloggers. Many have latched on to the dead baby claims as evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime is wicked beyond belief, and probably in need of a good bombing to bring it to its senses. But where does the story come from?

It originated in a report by British-based journalist John Sweeney for the BBC, where Sweeney writes of '...the faking of the mass baby funerals. You may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through the streets of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq'.


Sweeney points out that 'usefully, the ages of the dead babies - "three days old", "four days old" - are written in English on the coffins', before asking ominously 'I wonder who did that?'. He then quotes Iraqi sources claiming that dead babies are stored until there are enough for a fake mass funeral.


So where did Sweeney get this information? From a man called Ali, who recently fled central Iraq to the relative safety of the Kurdish north, after being suspected of having a hand in the murder of Saddam Hussein's son Uday. Even Sweeney admits that Ali doesn't look like the most trustworthy person in the world (he's 'not exactly a contender to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury', and has previously been involved in violence), but Sweeney half-reassures his readers that 'I don't think he was lying to us'.


However, the 'evidence' for the fake funerals doesn't even come directly from Ali, but from a friend of a friend of Ali's. Sweeney tells us that Ali is a friend of a taxi driver whose son has a position in the Iraqi regime - and the son told his taxi driver dad who then told Ali who then told Sweeney that babies are stored for mass funerals. Whatever happened to journalistic proof? Ali's story is nothing more than hearsay presented as evidence. And it is now being presented by some as further justification for bombing Iraq.


As it happens, Sweeney was embroiled in another journalistic row earlier this year, when the BBC was accused by its own staff of being 'colonial' in the way it reported the Zimbabwe elections in March 2002. As the Guardian reported:


'Senior figures at the BBC World Service have expressed concern to the domestic news division that coverage of the Zimbabwe elections has been driven by a "colonial" agenda, potentially causing damage to the corporation's reputation for impartiality. Particular anxieties have been expressed about the tone of coverage on Radio 4's Today programme and about a Correspondent documentary in which...Sweeney smuggled himself into Zimbabwe in the boot of a car.'


The Guardian went on: 'Sweeney appeared to suggest it was necessary to hide in a car to interview the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. In fact, Mr Tsvangirai has been interviewed many times by different BBC outlets, even appearing in person at Bush House.'


Back to Iraq: why are so many willing to believe the dead baby story without the same standards of proof we would normally demand - especially for something so shocking? It seems that when it comes to Iraq, some people will buy any story. Many on the right champion reason and rationality, but Iraq is their blindspot, the issue on which they will trumpet anything that bolsters their case for invading and bombing Iraq. And in the absence of any hard, coherent evidence that Iraq poses a threat to the West, any old hearsay will do.