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.
why a government scientist (apparently) committed suicide
The answer to that is probably easier than is being made out: the chap had broken the official secrets act in order, it is true, to blow an important whistle, and couldn't take the resultant flak.
However, in other areas, the government is pretty keen on whistle blowers - they just didn't like official confirmation that they had taken us to war on a lie. So if Kelly had managed to ride the storm for a little longer, he might have found wide appreciation of his revelations instead of just feeling got at.
I agree with you about the BBC reporting of the enquiry, but they were at fault in their initial report.
The whole thing is a mess: lots of culpable individuals, each to be blamed for different parts of the whole thing. It will be interesting to see what Lord Hutton makes of it in the end.
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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.
no subject
The answer to that is probably easier than is being made out: the chap had broken the official secrets act in order, it is true, to blow an important whistle, and couldn't take the resultant flak.
However, in other areas, the government is pretty keen on whistle blowers - they just didn't like official confirmation that they had taken us to war on a lie. So if Kelly had managed to ride the storm for a little longer, he might have found wide appreciation of his revelations instead of just feeling got at.
I agree with you about the BBC reporting of the enquiry, but they were at fault in their initial report.
The whole thing is a mess: lots of culpable individuals, each to be blamed for different parts of the whole thing. It will be interesting to see what Lord Hutton makes of it in the end.