Suspected WMD source 'missing'

BBC

the reason i don;t think it's faked is bcz that wd require the kind of cool, calculated plotting which would recognise the risks in herent in the strategy (if they knew for certain they had done EXACTLY what they were accused of, they would have front centre of their minds the worry abt WHAT IF WE'RE FOUND OUT? OUR ANGER ONLY RIVETS ATTENTION PLUS HUGELY RAISES THE STAKES)

his line was curious: he was grumpy and not very articulate, and basically taking the line that campbell had gone solo loco and was harming his boss who "we all" wished well, and that this kind of behaviour — eg campbell's tantrum — was resignation stuff

blair and bush have both enacted policy in a way that has stirred up the established political and government classes and orgs AGAINST ONE ANOTHER: they have made many of the agencies they depend on so angry with them that moles and whistleblowers are pouring out of the woodwork — how many fronts does blair think he can fight on? he keeps opening new ones!!

on the one hand, neo-imperialism blah blah: on the other, a sustained (unthinking?) assault by the administration in question on all the existing structures that can enable and sustain empires?

It was crass misjudgement about how the public thinks. The public don't give a toss whether the dossier was "sexed up". Partial presentation of the facts is exactly the behaviour they expect from politicians.

Hounding the BBC is another matter. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the specific accusation, most of the electorate will believe that the BBC was trying its best to do an honest job in difficult circumstances. How do you report impartially on a war which even members of the government believe is being fought for different reasons than the ones given by the Prime Minister? Even if the BBC got it wrong in this narrow and particular instance, most people will believe its worst offence was to imply that a habitual liar might be lying. It was public relations own goal by the government right from the start, and they compounded it by hounding a particular journalist and a scientist who by all accounts was a decent, limelight-shunning professional, and who now appears to have committed suicide as a result.

None of this needed to have implications for the re-election of the government. It was always about Blair and Campbell's personal vanity. I doubt Blair recover from this. Claire Short's demand for a quick succession struck me as ludicrously out of touch with reality just a couple of weeks ago. Now it looks like the only option if the government is to survive in a condition fit to govern. If Blair is about anything more than personal ambition he will resign now.

The problem with this is that, if my suspicions are correct (and they are if his 'history' speech is anything to go by), Blair genuinely doesn't believe he has done anything wrong.

mainly i don't buy that this wz ENTIRELY calculated bcz it exactly does a lot of stuff they have always so very calculatedly avoided (such as AC putting himself in the limelight...)

"What most people call 'spin', the routine lubricant of all political gearboxes, is, in Blair's case, eloquent self-delusion on a heroic scale."

Phew! That's a relief, then!

Here's the scene the night before last. Note how his self-consciously 'relaxed' stance utterly fails to mask the inner turmoil, in contrast to her easy self-asssurance.

http://rarara.v21hosting.co.uk/photos/kellymastermind.jpg

I think the murdered conspiracy theories are completely unthinkable.
Worst case scenario for the government i'd imagine would be suicide(because i really cant see it being a murder case)

I can't see that the BBC has done anything wrong in this. It attempted to protect its source, and but for the scandalous actions of the MOD would probably have succeeded.

The Labour party will regret its short-termist and self-indulgent hostility towards the BBC. It will be much harder to complain if a future Tory administration bullies the BBC board into muting any criticism of the government. Labour may find it hard to get rid of a future Tory administration with most of the privately owned media in its pocket and a cowed BBC.