By the turn of the year, most of the media (particularly the press in the UK) had become decidedly bellicose and had made up its mind that war was inevitable, and that those who opposed military action were guilty of appeasing Hussein. Therefore Hussein must be dealt with from a positon of strength since its the 'only kind of language he understands'. Appeasement, of course, has connotations with Western Europe's approach to Hitler in the 1930's - from German re-armament and the de-militarisation of the Rhineland to the annexation of Austria and the Munich agreement of 1938 - tolerance of an incremental growth in dictatorial power is associated with weakness, and particularly represents a shameful episode in European history that must not be repeated ; Saddam was an inhuman menace and must be given no quarter.

America, too, approached the conflict with similar historical baggage. Their shameful past, however, was not Hitler, but Vietnam...(hear Norman Schwarzkopf - Commander-in-Cheif of US Central Command). Commentary from president to press was peppered with references to the Vietnam War : President Bush assured his population that the Gulf would not be another Vietnam and the military wouldn't be fighting with it's hands tied - similarly, the New York Times could proclaim after the conflict, "By God we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all"
Both of these outlooks clearly informed Western opinion of the Iraqi invasion, which in turn reflected a 'let's not give peace a chance' attitude in the media, and in spite of a C.I.A. report which stated that sanctions had halted 97% of Iraqi exports and the BBC's claim (9pm. 14/1/91) that sanctions appeared to be working, The Sun managed to state on 10th January that the opposite was true. The Sun (16/1/91) spoke, therefore, of "spineless appeasers" and The Times (15/1/91) bemoaned "the notorious appeaser remedy of giving sanctions longer to work". On 15th January, ITN echoed a BBC report of the same night saying that "war in the Gulf looked unavoidable.Iraq said tonight that it was ready for it. It rejected any final peace initiatives." The failure of peace negotiations, therefore, implies the inevitability of war, without questioning the validity of continuing to exert economic pressure via economic sanctions.

The prelude to war in America marked a period of intense media tunnel vision. The majority of the US's top news analysis programmes focussed on the forthcoming war and neglected to discuss alternative viewpoints. The media watchdog F.A.I.R. (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) pointed out that in the first month of the crisis the 'Nightline' programme did not have one voice arguing against armed intervention. Similarly, from the deployment of troops on 8/8/90 till 3/1/91 only 0.7% of speakers on ABC news were opposed to war. The social mix of guests also indicates a predominance of white, male, conservative opinion usually representing military or governmental opinion. given that America was on a war footing, it only make sense that government and military should appear on TV, but but bearing in mind that war with Iraq represents an attack on a leading Arab nation, the caucasian bias displayed on the Nightline and MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour of 98% and 87% respectively is insupportable.

The bias that characterised pre-war media reporting was to intensify as the conflict progressed due in part to the euphoria the event generated but also due to the structure of the media units who were reporting from the battle zone - a situation brought about by the military, but one with which the media accquiesed.

Lack of balance can be located not only with reference to representation of opinion, but also in terms of evidence relevant to the perceptions of the Iraqi forces. On 11th Sept.1990, President Bush declared before congress that 120,000 Iraqi troops and 850 tanks had invaded Kuwait and were heading southwards to threaten Saudi Arabia. ABC news bought Soviet satellite photographs of Kuwait that contradicted this outlook, yet declined to broadcast the story because they lacked a photograph of part of southern Kuwait. The complete set of the photo's were obtained quite easily by Jean Heller of a minor newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times, in Florida who, acting, in response to expert analysis that there was no evidence of a massive build-up nor proof of there being an immanent invasion, took the story to the Associated Press and Scripps-Howard, but neither cared to run the story1 This occured 9 days prior to the UN deadline for Iraqi withdrawal, when clearly the news agenda had become one of 'can we win the war ?' as opposed to 'should we fight a war ?'