CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE
Most of the time the mob is happy to watch the gladiatorial battles from a measured distance ñ close enough to see the blood in the sand, far enough away not to have to see the wounds. Thus we can, from some remove, cheer the heroes & boo the villains & then go home.
Not so easy, however, in the wake of this latest fatality of the Iraq war, a hitherto anonymous & seemingly innocent bystander called Dr David Kelly. The story begins with an accusation levelled by the BBC against the government claiming that the Downing Street-generated document on which all justifications for the invasion of Iraq were based had been ësexed upí. Particular attention was drawn to the assertion that Saddam Hussein had WMD that could be activated within 45 minutes but the overall burden of the information was that the report has been deliberately & calculatedly massaged so as to over-represent the case for war..
Tony Blairís press secretary Alistair Campbell strenuously denied the allegation & - clearly believing that attack was quite the best method of defence ñ demanded that the BBC reveal their source (admitted to be one man) & apologise publicly for their calumny. Horns were locked & battle was joined. And grudging admiration has to be accorded to Alistair Campbell: his nerve remained steady & the thumbs of the mob, which had been turning south, began to waver. His resolute & pugnacious denial of guilt & his aggressive pursuit of the BBC for their arrogance in daring to suggest that a government of such transparent morality should even contemplate such dishonesty impressed the investigating panel. The subsequent report, whilst not uncritical of Campbell, accepted his declaration of innocence & took the BBCís Andrew Gilligan to task for not revealing his source . Thus far, then, just another slugging match between media & government that resulted (thanks to the skilful & cynical obfuscation of Alistair Campbell) in a messy draw.
Except that at the pitch of the combat an unlikely figure stepped into the arena. A slight, grey-haired, quietly-spoken expert on chemical & biological warfare called Dr David Kelly presented himself somewhat diffidently as the possible source of the BBCís accusation. He had, he said, talked to the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan & may have passed on information that was used to substantiate the accusation. His tentative offering resulted in five days of cross-examination from the panel of MPs, some of it abrasive & downright hostile. Dr Kelly dealt with it with some dignity (although the volume of his responses was so low that at one point the air conditioning had to be turned off to render him audible).
It was concluded that Dr Kelly was almost certainly not Andrew Gilliganís informant & the whole affair appeared to be downsizing from bloody skirmish to unseemly scuffle. If a victor emerged it was Alistair Campbell, whose brilliant & almost ostentatiously unprincipled tactics drew fire from the government on the matter of phantom WMD very effectively. And then, yesterday, Dr David Kelly left his 3-storey country house & walked to nearby woodland where he took prescription painkillers & slashed his wrists.
Itís unclear at this point exactly what motivated him. By the time my small but discerning public reads this all might be revealed. But of particular interest is an email that he sent to the New York Times talking of the doings of ëdark actorsí & thus implying disturbing dimensions to what appears at the moment to be a largely personal tragedy.
What is apparent is that this increasingly isolated government, so far ëbloody but unbowedí, is now in real trouble. The normally urbane, boyishly charming, seductively plausible Tony Blair looked very unsteady at a press conference at the beginning of his Japanese visit. This might be attributed to sincere shock & distress at this entirely unanticipated event. Or it might be early evidence of a man finally hobbled by his own absolute certainty of factual & moral rectitude concerning the invasion of Iraq. If that is the case then the next few months are going to be horribly fascinating. Like watching a building falling down in slow motion. The mob will be delightedÖ
1:39:39 AM 
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