Saturday, July 19, 2003

Hugo Young analyses the David Kelly suicide.

I think that Blair is in real trouble. The fact that he's now admitting the possibility that the war was launched because of an error (or wishful thinking on the part of the hawks), suggests he believes that the WMD story has basically lost any credibility and is indefensible. As Young points out, the main aim now is to shift attention onto trivia. Surely it can't really work? I'm never voting for Blair again, and I'm pretty sure that's a wide-spread feeling in the UK now. Time for the Labour Party to realize his repution is damaged beyond repair.

As for Kelly, I'm a bit suspicious. It's hard to imagine someone like him being driven to suicide after a couple of grillings and a bit of publicity? This is a guy who worked for the MoD at Porton Down, was head of micro-biology. (Doesn't that make him pretty much the British Rihab Taha al-Azawi al-Tikriti?) Don't they have some kind of profiling and screening for people to work in a job like that? Aren't these people made of sterner stuff? Or at least given some training in managing pressure? What if the Russians had tried to blackmail him?

So I wonder if there's something more. Was he, in fact, the mole? And more terrified of discovery after he'd lied to and convinced the select commities? Was he being blackmailed? Were other threats being made against him? Did he know something about the wrath of the secret services that we don't?

All good conspiracy theory stuff, of course.

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