Peter Manson: ‘we do not tell lies’

Submitted by cathy n on 16 October, 2008 - 5:39

I’m the editor of the Weekly Worker... The Weekly Worker does not publish lies... It’s counter-productive to tell lies, especially when you’re engaged in polemics against another organisation. It’s counterproductive to misrepresent them knowingly.

Sometimes we make mistakes as all people do but we do not tell lies, not while I’m editor we don’t.

When we said on our front page that Sean Matgamna was excusing a nuclear attack on Iran, that was our understanding of it... He said that faced with the Tehran lunatics — if I may be allowed to paraphrase — Israel’s got the right to self-defence, including of course a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear installations.

In the name of what alternative would be condemn such an attack? The answer was quite clearly that we would not condemn such an attack... We wouldn’t oppose it either. The National Committee of the AWL voted against this. So... it’s putting it very mildly indeed to say you excuse an attack...

I can quite accept that Sean Matgamna didn’t realise that such an attack on Iranian nuclear installations would have to be nuclear, they would have to be facilitated by a nuclear armed bunker-busters. He didn’t realise that, but ignorance is no excuse...

In fact any attack to be effective, to take out Iran’s nuclear installations, would have to be done by nuclear armed bunker busters. That is a fact and that is what we said. There’s nothing untrue about that, it’s 100% true.

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