Blair Under New Fire Over Dead Scientist Probe

[pinto]

Wed January 7, 2004 10:14 AM ET

By Mike Peacock

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair was grilled Wednesday over a late submission by his government to a potentially explosive inquiry into the death of a British scientist, which is due to report shortly.

Blair's spokesman admitted the government had sent information to senior judge Lord Hutton after he concluded his investigation last Autumn but denied it included new evidence.

Opposition Conservatives demanded its publication and accused Blair of trying to pre-empt Hutton's findings. But Hutton said there was nothing surprising about the submission.

Weapons expert David Kelly slashed his wrist last July after being exposed as the source behind a BBC reporter's claim that Blair and his team inflated the threat posed by Iraq to justify a war which most Britons opposed.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4087346

[J B]

1. No new evidence, points & arguments = raw spin

Just to translate into American English here.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

2. it's nice

that all the news reports conclude that Kelly slashed his own wrists. What's to investigate if the conclusion is made?

[J B]

3. Whether he was driven to suicide and by whom/what.

Death via the political-journalistic complex, so to speak.

[rman]

4. and interesting is the motive they came up with:

this long time military advisor and UN weapons inspector "could not handle the pressure".

yeah sure.

[J B]

5. Depends what kind of pressure.

They were talking about the complete overthrow of an elected government over there. It's not hard to see how the entire military, political and media structure came down on this one man's head because, in the present system, the Prime Minister is essentially King, so the head of a King was at stake, and Hutton was the man with the axe.

So the theory goes, he killed himself rather than live a destroyed man hated and despised for all of British history as a traitor to his government.