by Simon 865 Replies latest social current
And here we go again. Better get ready to sacrifice some more US troops over greedy capitalism...
WASHINGTON - Federal authorities on Thursday searched 18 U.S. businesses as part of a probe into arms shipments to Iran including components for fighter jets, missiles and other weapons.
13 July 2003
1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks
A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.
2 Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together
Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.
Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.
3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme
The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review".
4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons
The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.
5 Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War
Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.
6 Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus
Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously.
7 Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox
This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it.
8 US and British claims were supported by the inspectors
According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 litres of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons programme" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."
9 Previous weapons inspections had failed
Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons programme" until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons programme more than a month before the defection.
10 Iraq was obstructing the inspectors
Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming."
11 Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes
This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.
12 The "dodgy dossier"
Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created.
13 War would be easy
Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained.
14 Umm Qasr
The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's defence staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely.
15 Basra rebellion
Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth.
16 The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch
Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed.
17 Troops would face chemical and biological weapons
As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican Guard units were authorised to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong.
"It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen."
18 Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD
"I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin.
19 Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis
Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people".
Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund.
Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
20 WMD were found
After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain.
Jayson; my point was to try and draw attention to the similarities in the process of dissemination of a meme (1975 or WoMD), and then when it doesn’t appear, denial that there ever was a meme disseminated, or management of the situation so that the error, rather than being of the person at whom the buck stops, is the error of some faceless underling, or is an error of interpretation on part of those the meme was disseminated to. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear; I’d be interested in your response on this particular point.
Core of weapons case crumbling
By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent
Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true.
The confusion evident about one of the claims, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger despite having no civilian nuclear programme, is the latest example of the process under which the allegations made so confidently last September have been undermined.
The CIA has admitted that the claim should not have been in President Bush's State of the Union speech.
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa
President George W Bush in State of the Union address It turns out that the CIA and the British intelligence agency MI6 passed each other like ships in the night and did not share information.
Correspondents attending a Foreign Office briefing last week were astounded when an official remarked that there had been no duty on Britain to pass its information on Niger, which it obtained from "a foreign intelligence service", to Washington as it was "up to the other intelligence service to do so."
Apparently there is a protocol among intelligence services which could not be broken despite the grave nature of the information and the use to which it was put - in this case, to help justify going to war.
Even a CIA statement of explanation issued late last week was not quite correct.
It said that the President's famous 16 words were accurate in that the "British Government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa."
Mr Bush did not in fact simply mention a British "report" on the uranium.
He actually said that the British had "learned" that Iraq had sought these supplies. He therefore hardened up the position.
Democratic Senator Carl Levin said on Sunday that this suggested intent by the White House to exaggerate the threat from Iraq.
The nine main conclusions and the broad evidence which has emerged about them are these:
1. "Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents."
No evidence of Iraq's useable capability has been found in terms of manufacturing plants, bombs, rockets or actual chemical or biological agents, nor any sign of recent production.
A mysterious truck has been found which the CIA says is a mobile biological facility but this has not been accepted by all experts.
2. "Saddam continues to attach great importance to the possession of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles... He is determined to retain these capabilities."
He may well have attached great importance to the possession of such weapons but none has been found. The meaning of the word "capability" is now key to this.
If the US and UK governments can show that Iraq maintained an active expertise, amounting to a "programme", they will claim their case has been made that Iraq violated UN resolutions.
3. "Iraq can deliver chemical and biological agents using an extensive range of shells, bombs, sprayers and missiles."
Nothing major has been found so far. There was one aircraft adapted with a sprayer but its capability was small.
4. "Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons... Uranium has been sought from Africa."
The UN watchdog the IAEA said there was no evidence for this up to the start of the war and none has been found since. It is possible, though, that a case could be made from a shopping list of items needed for such a programme.
These include vacuum pumps, magnets, winding and balancing machines - all listed in the British dossier. No details about these purchasing attempts have been provided.
A claim that aluminium tubes were sought for this process was not wholly accepted by the British assessment though it was by the American and has subsequently not been proved.
The uranium claim is currently under question, though the British Government stands by its allegation.
5. "Iraq possesses extended-range versions of the Scud ballistic missile."
No Scuds have been found. The British said Iraq might have up to 20, the CIA said up to 12.
6. "Iraq's current military planning specifically envisages the use of chemical and biological weapons."
That may have been the case but direct evidence from serving Iraqi officers will be needed to prove it.
7. "The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons (chemical and biological) within 45 minutes of a decision to do so."
The 45 minute claim is currently under question. It is said to come from "a single source" probably a defector or Iraqi officer. It has not been proven.
8. "Iraq... is already taking steps to conceal and disperse sensitive equipment."
This is a focus of the current American and British investigation being carried out in Iraq by the Iraq Survey Group. One Iraqi scientist has come forward to say that he hid blueprints of centrifuges under his roses but that was in 1991.
If a pattern of concealment can be established, it would add to the credibility of the allegations that Iraq wanted to defy the UN.
9. "Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programme are well funded."
Evidence will be needed from serving Iraqi officials backed up by documents. Again, if a pattern of funding can be established, a case against Iraq could be made but if the actual programmes did not exist, was the funding of much use and in any case, how much was it?
President Bush and Prime Minister Blair will be meeting in Washington later this week when they will discuss their strategy to justify the claims.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/3063361.stm
Published: 2003/07/13 23:48:52 GMT
© BBC MMIII
Well, it seems Blair is back-peddling even more now:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3076267.stm
He declared that, even if no link between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism was proved, it was still right to have removed a brutal and murderous dictator from power.
Just as significantly, in a wide ranging speech which brought numerous standing ovations, he did not repeat his previous confidence that he would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And his comments came only days after a senior Whitehall source, claimed by some to have been Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, told the BBC weapons of mass destruction may never be found.
So, as the Washington speech again demonstrated, Mr Blair is preparing the ground for a fresh justification for war in the event WMD never turn up.
As a side note, I think it was a poor speach. With the eyes of the US on him he should have tacked things that matter like asking why America isn't signing up to environmental agreements and so on instead of just going there to tell them what they wanted to hear and digging for applause.
WMD WILL BE ON BLAIR'S POLITICAL HEADSTONE
| Jun 3 2003 | |
| By John Pilger | |
| SUCH a high crime does not, and will not, melt away; the facts cannot be changed. Tony Blair took Britain to war against Iraq illegally. He mounted an unprovoked attack on a country that offered no threat, and he helped cause the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The judges at the Nuremberg Tribunal following world war two, who inspired much of international law, called this "the gravest of all war crimes". Blair had not the shred of a mandate from the British people to do what he did. On the contrary, on the eve of the attack, the majority of Britons clearly demanded he stop. His response was contemptuous of such an epic show of true democracy. He chose to listen only to the unelected leader of a foreign power, and to his court and his obsession. With his courtiers in and out of the media telling him he was "courageous" and even "moral" when he scored his "historic victory" over a defenceless, stricken and traumatised nation, almost half of them children, his propaganda managers staged a series of unctuous public relations stunts. The first stunt sought to elicit public sympathy with a story about him telling his children that he had "almost lost his job". The second stunt, which had the same objective, was a story about how his privileged childhood had really been "difficult" and "painful". The third and most outrageous stunt saw him in Basra, in southern Iraq last week, lifting an Iraqi child in his arms, in a school that had been renovated for his visit, in a city where education, like water and other basic services, are still a shambles following the British invasion and occupation. When I saw this image of Blair holding a child in Basra, I happened to be in a hotel in Kabul in Afghanistan, the scene of an earlier "historic victory" of Bush and Blair in another stricken land. I found myself saying out loud the words, "ultimate obscenity". It was in Basra that I filmed hundreds of children ill and dying because they had been denied cancer treatment equipment and drugs under an embargo enforced with enthusiasm by Tony Blair. It was the one story Blair's court would almost never tell, because it was true and damning. Up to July last year, $5.4 billion in vital and mostly humanitarian supplies for the ordinary people of Iraq were being obstructed by the United States, backed by Britain. Professor Karol Sikora, head of the World Health Organisation's cancer treatment programme, who had been to the same hospitals in Basra that I saw, told me: "The excuse that certain drugs can be converted into weapons of mass destruction is ludicrous. I saw wards where dying people were even denied pain-killers." That was more than three years ago. Now come forward to a hot May day in 2003, and here is Blair - shirt open, a man of the troops, if not of the people - lifting a child into his arms, for the cameras, and just a few miles from where I watched toddler after toddler suffer for want of treatment that is standard in Britain and which was denied as part of a medieval siege approved by Blair. Remember, the main reason that these life-saving drugs and equipment were blocked, the reason Professor Sikora and countless other experts ridiculed, was that essential drugs and even children's vaccines could be converted to weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMD, has become part of the jargon of our time. When he finally goes, Blair ought have WMD chiselled on his political headstone. He has now been caught; for it must be clear to the most devoted courtier that he has lied about the primary reason he gave, repeatedly, for attacking Iraq. THERE is a series of such lies; I have counted at least a dozen significant ones. They range from Blair's "solid evidence" linking Iraq with Al-Qaeda and September 11 (refuted by British intelligence) to claims of Iraq's "growing" nuclear weapons programme (refuted by the International Atomic Energy Agency when documents quoted by Blair were found to be forgeries), to perhaps his most audacious tale - that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "could be activated within 45 minutes". It is now Day 83 in the post-war magical mystery hunt for Iraq's "secret" arsenal. One group of experts, sent by George Bush, have already gone home. This week, British intelligence sources exposed Blair's "45 minutes" claim as the fiction of one defector with scant credibility. A United Nations inspector has ridiculed Blair's latest claim that two canvas-covered lorries represent "proof" of mobile chemical weapons. Incredible, yesterday he promised "a new dossier". It is ironic that the unravelling of Blair has come from the source of almost all his lies, the United States, where senior intelligence officers are now publicly complaining about their "abuse as political propagandists". They point to the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz who, said one of them, fed "the most alarming tidbits to the president ... so instead of giving the president the most considered, carefully examined information available, basically you give him the garbage. And then in a few days when it's clear that maybe it wasn't right, well then, you feed him some hot garbage." That Blair's tale about Saddam Hussein being ready to attack "in 45 minutes" is part of the "hot garbage" is not surprising. What is surprising, or unbelievable, is that Blair did not know it was "hot", just as he must have known that Jack Straw and Colin Powell met in February to express serious doubts about the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction. IT was all a charade. Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, has spoken this truth: the invasion of Iraq was planned long ago, he said, and that the issue of weapons rested largely on "fabricated evidence". Blair has made fools not so much of the British people, most of whom were and are on to him, but of respectable journalists and broadcasters who channelled and amplified his black propaganda as headlines and lead items on BBC news bulletins. They cried wolf for him. They gave him every benefit of the doubt, and so minimised his culpability and allowed him to set much of the news agenda. For months, the charade of weapons of mass destruction overshadowed real issues we had a right to know about and debate - that the United States intended to take control of the Middle East by turning an entire country, Iraq, into its oil-rich base. History is our evidence. Since the 19th century, British governments have done the same, and the Blair government is no different. What is different now is that the truth is winning through. This week, publication of an extraordinary map left little doubt that the British military had plastered much of Iraq with cluster bombs, many of which almost certainly have failed to detonate on impact. They usually wait for children to pick them up, then they explode, as in Kosovo and Afghanistan. They are cowardly weapons; but of course this was one of the most craven of all wars, "fought" against a country with no navy, no air force and rag-tag army. Last month, HMS Turbulent, a nuclear-power submarine, slipped back to Plymouth, flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates' emblem. How appropriate. THIS British warship fired 30 American Tomahawk missiles at Iraq. Each missile cost 700,000 pounds, a total of 21 million pounds in taxpayers' money. That alone would have provided the basic services that the British government has yet to restore to Basra, as it is obliged to do under international law. What did HMS Turbulent's 30 missiles hit? How many people did they kill and maim? And why have we heard nothing about this? Perhaps the missiles had sensory devices that could distinguish Bush's "evil-doers" and Blair's "wicked men" from toddlers? What is certain is they were not aimed at the Ministry of Oil. This cynical and shaming chapter in Britain's modern story was written in our name, your name. Blair and his collaborators ought not to be allowed to get away with it. John Pilger's updated book, The New Rulers of the World, is published by Vreso. |
Coincidence? I think not. Now the government is killing off people who dared expose them..
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030718/ap_on_re_eu/britain_weapons_adviser_12
Found Body Could Be British Adviser
57 minutes ago By MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer
LONDON - A body found in central England was tentatively identified by police as a missing Ministry of Defense adviser who was named as the possible source for a disputed news report that claimed the government doctored intelligence on Iraqi weapons to strengthen the case for war.
David Kelly's family reported him missing late Thursday when he didn't return to his home in Southmoor, about 20 miles southwest of Oxford, from an afternoon walk.
"The body found matches the description of David Kelly, but the body has not yet been formally identified," a spokeswoman for Thames Valley Police said.
Officers had earlier reported finding a man's body in a wooded area about 5 miles from Kelly's home.
Kelly, a 59-year-old former weapons inspector, was one of the figures at the center of a political storm over allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair ( news - web sites )'s office altered intelligence on Iraq ( news - web sites )'s alleged weapons programs to support the decision to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The government denied the claim.
The Ministry of Defense said Kelly may have been the source for a British Broadcasting Corp. report that Blair aides gave undue prominence to a claim that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice.
The Ministry of Defense said Friday that Kelly had been told he had violated civil service rules by having unauthorized contact with a journalist, but "that was the end of it." It said Kelly had at no point been threatened with suspension or dismissal after admitting speaking to the BBC reporter.
BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan subsequently said his source accused Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications director, of insisting on including the 45-minute claim.
"This is clearly a sensitive inquiry," David Purnell of Thames Valley Police spokesman told a press conference.
Purnell said police were trying to find out whether anyone else was missing from the area.
The controversy centers over the May 29 BBC report citing an unidentified official saying the 45-minute claim was inserted to build up an intelligence dossier published last September.
Kelly, a former U.N. weapons inspector, told a Parliament committee earlier this week he had spoken to the BBC. But he said he didn't make the claims in the report and didn't believe he was the source cited. The BBC has refused government requests to reveal who the source was.
The BBC report prompted two Parliamentary probes into the issue and fueled a wider controversy that has left Blair facing a barrage of questions over pre-war intelligence. The Foreign Affairs Committee cleared Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell, of allegations he tried to build up the September dossier by inserting the claim.
Blair was informed of the discovery of the body as he flew from Washington to Tokyo, his office confirmed.
Blair said Thursday in a historic address to Congress in Washington that he and President Bush ( news - web sites ) would not be proven wrong in their prewar claims about Iraq's weapons capabilities. Even if they are, says Blair, a menace has been defeated.
The Defense Ministry said Friday, "We are aware that Dr. David Kelly has gone missing and we are obviously concerned."
A spokesman for Blair's office also expressed concern for Kelly's welfare. "Our thoughts are with his family and friends," the spokesman said.
Officers said Kelly's failure to make contact with anyone was described by his family as "out of character."
Television journalist Tom Mangold said he had spoken to Kelly's wife, Janice, on Friday morning, and she had said her husband felt stressed after appearing before a parliamentary committee to face questions about the BBC report.
"She told me he had been under considerable stress, that he was very, very angry about what had happened at the committee, that he wasn't well, that he had been to a safe house, he hadn't liked that, he wanted to come home," Mangold told ITV news.
"She didn't use the word depressed, but she said he was very, very stressed and unhappy about what had happened and this was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in."
The Ministry of Defense said it had offered accommodation for Kelly so that he could avoid media attention.
Initial searches of his house and its outbuildings and grounds were completed early Friday.
Donald Anderson, who chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee where Kelly testified on Tuesday, said the committee "felt pretty confident that he (Kelly) was not in fact the source."
Anderson, a Labor Party lawmaker, told BBC television that Kelly had appeared "rather relaxed" during his testimony and seemed to be "on top of things."
Conservative committee member Richard Ottaway said Kelly had suggested he was under great strain.
"At the meeting last week he did hint at the sort of pressure he was under," Ottaway said. "He was asked to provide some evidence and he replied that he would do so but he could not get into his house because of the media pressure."
You only have to look at the amount of bodies that are linked with Bill and Hilary Clinton to know that this is not unusual.
That is a bit worrying. The bit on the radio was quite clear that the MOD had used the guy as chaff in an attempt to discredit him and point the blame and the timing before the commons break and publishing the report was designed to prevent the committee questioning him (ie. just accept it)
Lord whats-his-face already had some explaining to do - why they named him when the committe said that within 5 minutes they knew it couldn't have been him. And why he's now dead.
So what does Blair have that Bush wants? Support? AND why has Blair become the official political sacrifical lamb for Iraq?
Was the public (world wide) lied to? Yup, in a way - why? Look at the 24 hour news day. Now we're pissed the politician are using the media for their (sometimes Right Winged) agendas? Bush did what he felt was right and used the media as a source for psychological operations against Iraq. The ends justifies the means on this one.
Besides the WoMD are in Syria, Hussain is in Iran, Saudi has always hated the U.S. and is funding the whole terrorist network, politicians are not telling the truth! The problem starts when he begins to tell the 'truth'.
Let's look at the Axis of Evil ... U.N. If they would've put their foot down in the beginning and hold Iraq to their own agreements and time frames, then many of my friends would not be in the sandbox they're in now.
