gerald_duck: (Default)
Gerald the cuddly duck ([personal profile] gerald_duck) wrote in [personal profile] ewx 2003-09-18 02:37 am (UTC)

Could I just say how impressed I am with the way the BBC is reporting this mess, given that the journalists writing the stories presumably only sit a couple of desks away from some of the principal protagonists?

I feel a great deal of the difficulty here is the sheer obviousness of what was "revealed". The 45 minutes claim was palpable bullshit, and everyone involved must have known so at every stage.

They claim they were referring to battlefield munitions, whereas the press and the public read "weapons of mass destruction" as referring to something much more potent, that could attack large numbers of civilians, possibly at range. This is clearly disingenuous - even if they hadn't intended that "mis-"interpretation, they saw the spin the claim was given, and did nothing to correct it.

But even if referring to battlefield chemical/biological/nuclear agents, the claim was cobblers.

Let us take a different example. Suppose the government had produced a dossier in which they claimed "the sky is not blue". If a journalist then had a lunch appointment with an acquaintance in the Met Office about some other matter, and happened to mention that claim, what kind of reaction would you expect him to get - an informed scientific opinion in an official capacity, or an informal personal opinion on the various people who might have written that dossier?

Tony Blair, and various of his subordinates, lied to the people who elected him, and participated in an unjust and catastrophically stupid war, against the express wishes of a majority of the electorate, in the face of some of the largest public demonstrations ever seen in this nation.

The current enquiry has been convened to find out why a government scientist (apparently) committed suicide when it was alleged he had stated the bleedin' obvious. That's an interesting question, and one that deserves an answer, but I can't help feel it's a diversion from the main issue, here.

Post a comment in response:

(will be screened)
(will be screened if not validated)
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org