Monday, August 04, 2003

If Andrew Gilligan and his superiors at the BBC are the bad guys in the case of David Kelly's suicide, and Tony Blair and his people are the good guys, why is Blair's Ministry of Defence burning documents related to Kelly -- including a "media plan"?

Defence chiefs were accused of a cover-up yesterday after trying to burn documents about scientist David Kelly just days after his suicide.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that copies of a "media plan" relating to Dr Kelly were discovered in a bin-bag heading for the incinerator....

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has denied giving his personal go-ahead to the naming of Dr Kelly but it has become clear his ministry press officials were instrumental in confirming Kelly's name to journalists....


I'm struggling to follow this story. It does seem (see this Guardian story) as if the Beeb's reporter, Andrew Gilligan, learned from Kelly that Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell, was responsible for changes in what the British now call "the dodgy dossier" -- but Kelly never expressly said that Campbell was responsible specifically for inserting a claim that Iraq could fire chemical weapons in 45 minutes. Well, somebody in the Blair government was responsible for that utterly preposterous claim. Partly as a result of it, we had a war on false pretenses. Blaming someone in a corrupt and dishonest government of being responsible for a specific lie when you may not have enough evidence to prove that individual's responsibility is bad; sending people to die in a war premised on a lie is worse. And using burn bags to cover your tracks after sending people to war for a lie is reprehensible.

(Thanks to BuzzFlash for the first link, from the Sunday Mail.)

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