Australian
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Clip description

Jim Lobe is the Bureau Chief of Inter Press Service and he’s on his way to an event at which Richard Pearl is to speak. He’s the star of the American Enterprise Group’s seminar held in Washington in 2003 to explain the current situation in Iraq. This right wing think tank, of which Richard Pearl is an office holder, underpins George W Bush’s foreign policy.

Curator’s notes

Richard Pearl is an archetypal Neo-con. He’s often considered to be the Neo-con’s propagandist. He’s clever, persuasive and has enormous power within the Washington inner circle of the current US regime. All of this we learn in voice-over from Jim Lobe from Inter Press Service. Jonathan Holmes has carefully structured and filmed Mr Lobe as he walks along the Washington street on his way to the seminar. As he walks, his voice-over explains exactly what a Neo-con is. The action is moved forward and the audience has a brief description of the Neo-con spokesperson Richard Pearl, just before he begins his address to this right wing think tank, the American Enterprise Group. Thus the program needs less reporter narration and is able to use a range of views from Americans to vary the tone of the presentation. We are then primed to listen to Richard Pearl with a more critical ear.

The program shows us, in this era just after 9/11, that the Neo-cons are a power to be reckoned with. They’re very much at the centre of Bush’s foreign policy after the Clinton years where they were voices in the wilderness. The program also enables viewers in Australia to see for ourselves what has been driving this push to war in Iraq.

This Four Corners program was broadcast at a time of great confusion in Australia and throughout the west. Many people were asking what Iraq had to do with the search for the terrorists who had carried out the 9/11 attacks, and Richard Pearl and his Neo-con philosophy seemed to justify Bush’s position. The Australian Prime Minister John Howard (1996-2007) was one of the first to join the 'coalition of the willing’. For those who had doubts about the US President’s judgement about the urgency of war with Iraq, watching Richard Pearl and other Neo-cons explain their philosophy helped us to understand the fervour underpinning Bush’s belligerent stand.