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CharlesBHoff
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el paso texas
May 2002
time: 05:33
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Tony (Bush lapdog) Blair than war criminal put alot of pressure on Lord Hutton (unfit to be judge) to rule the way he did. Lord Hutton need to be investlate for his bias ruleing in Lapdog flavor.
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:33
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I suppose that within Hutton's view of his remit he was probably right. But he made a narrow remit even narrower.
If i were a UK voter (instead of just a permanent resident), I'd insist on a full inquiry into the obvious intelligence failures that led to the war. Even the US is starting to accept its intelligence was flawed.
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000
time: 05:33
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A thing that is worth remembering is that those who appoint people to conduct inquiries very often pick a judge or a lawyer with court experience (unless the inquiry involves delving into some highly technical subject).
Now this is natural. An inquiry must arrange to take evidence. And to do so in circumstances where there are always a range of individuals or groups with special interests. A judge or a court lawyer has daily experience of the processes required. And of all those things which experience shows to matter when you have to evaluate whether evidence is worth anything or not.
But when you appoint a lawyer you predetermine a lot about the approach that will be taken. And about the issues which will be addressed.
Lord Hutton took great care to identify and list out the exact issues he understood his remit to require him to examine and to form an opinion upon.
I think he did well in this. But I am a lawyer too so that is not surprising.
Others comment that he was too narrow.
Now the point is this. As a judge he is used to trying issues which can be resolved either by making findings of fact as to what exactly happened or by arguement in which it is possible to refer to authority - that is how arguemts over legal points are conducted.
What he is not used to doing - and would need to be dragged to kicking and screaming - is the process of making value judgments on wide ranging matters where all sorts of personal views are what really matter.
So he is at home examining whether an individual (Blair) told the truth about what happened at a meeting, at home in examining the question of whether Dr Kelly commited suicide or not, at home in examining whether an interview conducted by a journalist gave him a proper basis to allege bad faith but he is not at home in expressing an opinion on such a broad question as should the UK have sent troops to Iraq.
Now there is no doubt what sparked off the need for this inquiry. It is the fact of Dr Kelly's death. On the face of it he appeared to have been the victim, partly of his own folly, but also of an attempt by Blair and his government to, yet again, manipulate the media (and public opinion) and, in this instance to have done so in a particularly underhand way.
So I agree with Lord Hutton that he was not called upon to address such matters as whether the "intelligence" in the dossier was sound; or whether the political decision to send troops to Iraq was a good one or a bad one.
Those are issues which arise whether Dr Kelly kills himself or not.
Moreover, if that is wrong and Lord Hutton should have interpreted his terms of appointment to extend to such matters I for one would think that daft. Because it is silly to think that you can resolve things like that by the process of taking evidence. They both involve highly complex value judgments.
"Intelligence" should either be left to those who claim they know what they are doing with it or - my own preference - ignored for the complete rubbish it almost always is. And wide ranging political issues are best left to political debate - in parliament, in the press, in the pub or wherever.
If someone disagrees about that and wants an inquiry into one of those issues - well don't pick a lawyer to conduct it. Chalk does not mix with cheese.
It rather illustrates the absurdity of holding an inquiry to answer such questions that it is pretty well impossible to think of the sort of person you should appoint. Anyone impartial is likely to suffer from the same problems as a judge. And what is the point of appointing a partizan?
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:33
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I am not necessarily after Blair's head, but I think certain institutions such as JIC or MI6 should take some responsibility.
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
Fortunately, we have the inquiry transcripts to test against Lord Hutton's almost comically tendentious conclusions. We know, for example, that Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell asked the joint intelligence committee's John Scarlett to redraft that part of the September dossier which suggested Saddam Hussein might use chemical and biological weapons "if he believes his regime is under threat" - and Scarlett did so, by taking out the qualifications. We know that Campbell asked Scarlett to change a claim that the Iraqi military "may be able" to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes to "are able". But Lord Hutton is of the view that this is not at all the "sexing up" that the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan quoted Kelly as complaining about. We also know that Blair chaired the meeting at which the strategy for outing Kelly was adopted, even though the prime minister later denied having anything to do with it. But, in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Lord Hutton, that was entirely consistent and honourable. |
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kell...1133918,00.html
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CerberusIV
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If you don't actually watch the UK media closely it is easy to overlook the stance many outlets took when this first blew up, the speculation and subjective reporting of the evidence during the hearings (not everything significant in the final report made the news at the time) and the efforts the TV and newspapers made to portray the report as a potential disaster to Tonly Blair. Taking that into account they were never going to be happy with anything that cleared Blair, Hoon and Campbell.
Add in that a major media organisation came out of this very badly and the media here are somewhat uncertain. They can't bring themselves to accept the government is in the clear - many have never entirely got out of the habit of looking for excuses to have a go at the government that they acquired when John Major was PM and the current opposition are not newsworthy - will never admit that they whipped up speculation without anything much to support it and yet need to say something. Add to that the fact that whilst they don't like the BBC in a media versus government tussle the media will stick together for self preservation. Result - the media are trying to spin Hutton into being unfair and wrong. Ironic when the whole thing started out of allegations of government spin.
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30-01-2004 03:08
This really is ridiculous. If there was any shred of credibility to what you are saying, we wouldn't be seeing a mass exodus of management from the BBC.
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