Sunday, June 1, 2008

Dr. David Kelly's shady suicide revisited

Well, unlike Tony, I am not one of those Christians who have had ever an audience with His Holiness the Pope and it is a while since I attended Church. But let me see, if I cast my mind back to my humble Christian upbringing, the Bible said, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Hmm so, if you want to be a genuine Christian, lying is out then. But hey, perhaps that's what the author of the article in Time meant when he said about Blair, "He handles questions about religion deftly." Because Blair seems to have deftly reconciled two seemingly opposite positions -- lying and telling the Truth, all at the same time. That's very deft!

So we have two Tony Blairs it seems: The politician who stood before the British Parliament, the British people and the wider world back in 2002/2003, and swore that he had conclusive proof that Saddam Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction with the intention of deploying them. Among the many, many informed high level people who questioned that claim at the time, were seasoned parliamentarians, senior diplomats and senior military men and yet, Blair repelled their objections as if he were fulfilling some divine purpose.

At one point in the lead up to the war Blair appeared on television to plead with a studio audience who were against going to war, of the moral rightness of his course of action. Once again, with Tartuffian skill, Blair gave a cleverly choreographed quasi religious performance: He appeared, like a Biblical Daniel in the Lion's Den surrounded by threatening doubters and sinners with only his Faith and God to protect him.

When presented with intelligent arguments and serious questions from the audience, Blair had no convincing answers to give, so retreated instead behind the all-but- visible mask of Christianity which he and Campbell had so cleverly created, to project an image that would overshadow the words of the audience. It is a technique he has practised to perfection.

Then, further along the road, there was the shameful business of the death of Dr David Kelly, the weapons expert whose shining reputation for integrity shone out like a beacon from the midst of the whole mendacious apparatus of government that Blair and his associates had knowingly spun around them.

We were told via the media that Dr Kelly took his own life. However, the news broke in the midst of all the lies about the whole sordid affair of the Iraq war. The accusations and denials came so thick and fast it became impossible for ordinary members of the public to unravel Truth from the lies. In spite of the Hutton Report, in the end it came down to a matter of what you believed to be so.

When the poor man's death was announced, Blair was on a foreign tour but again he made his entrance onto the stage before the world's media to give another of those polished Tarfuffian performances at which he is so very accomplished.

As I looked at his image on the television news, I wondered had he been more carefully and skillfully made up than usual for the cameras? His appearance was striking. He looked gaunt, sunken cheeked, tired and even... well... ill. In fact, he looked rather pathetic and deserving of our sympathy -- not our scorn. How deeply troubled and concerned Tony looked for poor Dr Kelly. But then, hang on a minute, who had set the dogs on poor Dr Kelly in the first place?
Cherie Blair has been accused by the family of British government scientist David Kelly of deliberately misrepresenting his suicide to downplay her husband's role in it.

Derek Vawdrey, the brother of Dr Kelly's widow, Janice, said the former prime minister's wife "should be ashamed of herself" for the misleading way she presents the suicide in her memoirs which are due to be released today.

Dr Kelly slashed his wrists in 2003 after being named by the Government as the expert who had allegedly told a BBC reporter that the Government had "sexed up" evidence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

In her memoirs, Mrs Blair says her husband and his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, were distraught after the suicide but she fails to mention that they had been responsible for naming Dr Kelly to the press and pushing the reserved scientist into the public eye.

"It's somehow so typical of the Blairs to make use of Dai's death to show the world what a wonderful man Tony Blair is," Mr Vawdrey told the Daily Mail.

"So far as I'm concerned my brother-in-law's death was caused by what went on at No 10 and what they said about him."

He said that "Dai" - the family's name for Dr Kelly - "was badly used then, and he's being badly used now".

The angry comments by Mr Vawdrey, who has spoken on behalf of his sister in the past, were extraordinary because the family has previously said little in public and Mrs Blair revealed in her book, Speaking for Myself, that the Blairs invited Mrs Kelly and her daughters to their country residence to tell them how sorry they were about his death.

While ignoring the Government's role in "outing" Dr Kelly, Mrs Blair even pointed the finger at the press for invading his family's privacy.

"It was clear to me that what had made Mrs Kelly's life even more intolerable was the behaviour of the press after he had killed himself, to the point of taking pictures through their front windows, utterly failing to respect their privacy at all."

Extracts published in British newspapers this week revealed Mrs Blair's version of the aftermath of Dr Kelly's death, which came while the Blairs were on an official visit to Asia.

"I have never seen Tony so distraught and I felt helpless to do anything," she wrote.

"In the 25 years since I had known Tony I had never seen him so badly affected."

Mrs Blair said she had reassured her husband that he was "a good man" with "pure motives".

"And it's true, Tony knew David Kelly was a loyal public servant driven to despair because of all the furore."

"Although only a six-day tour, Tony seemed to age 10 years and the stress was written on his face. Back in London, Alastair (Campbell) was going to pieces and Tony spent half the time on the phone trying to calm him down: physically and emotionally he was exhausted."

But Mr Vawdrey told the Mail: "It's a bit late for Cherie Blair to write that her husband 'knew that David Kelly was a loyal public servant driven to despair because of the furore'.

"Where else was the furore created but in her husband's office, with all that wicked nonsense being fed to the media that Dai was a Walter Mitty character and so on?"

Mrs Kelly has spoken about her husband's death only when giving evidence to a government inquiry into the tragedy.

In the latest extracts from the book, Mrs Blair says she and her husband had stayed at the summer residence of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2004 only to try to win votes for London's bid for the 2012 Olympics.

"Tony felt we might be able to use the relationship to get the three Italian votes for the London Olympics."

The visit produced embarrassing photographs of the Blairs stepping out with the right-wing Italian billionaire, who was wearing a pirate-style bandanna which Mrs Blair said had "foolish photo potential written all over it".


From: Dr Kelly's death: a black day by Cherie Blair

[2003: David Kelly, the scientist at the centre of a row between Downing Street and the BBC over weapons of mass destruction, has gone missing. The Blairs are on an official trip to the Far East.]

As I watched Tony hand back the phone, I saw him slump into his seat. From sitting upright he just crashed. David Kelly was dead, he said. His body had been found in woodland close to his home. It was awful. He decided there and then that there had to be an investigation and spoke to Charlie Falconer, now Lord Chancellor, from the plane to see which judge might be available. I have never seen Tony so distraught and I felt helpless to do anything. Eventually he spoke to Alastair - God knows what time it was for either of them - who had just arrived back in London. Alastair said he couldn't handle any more and wanted out.

After a night in Tokyo in which he barely slept, Tony had a meeting with the Prime Minister while I visited a centre for disadvantaged children. It should have been a great trip. We realised soon enough that it was going to be quite the opposite. In the 25 years I had known Tony, I had never seen him so badly affected by anything. At the Tokyo press conference, a journalist from the The Mail on Sunday shouted at my husband: "What's it like, Mr Blair, to have blood on your hands?"

Throughout the trip Tony did his best to look cheerful for the sake of his hosts, but it was desperate. In Beijing we saw an installation of hand-sized terracotta figures by Antony Gormley. There is a photograph of the two of us taken that morning that I keep in my study: Tony crouching down among these thousands of tiny figures, me behind him, my arms around him, giving him the support he needed.

"You are a good man," I told him as we crouched there, the cameras whirring. "And God knows your motives are pure, even if the consequences are not as you had hoped." And it's true. Tony knew that David Kelly was a loyal public servant driven to despair because of all the furore, caught up in something he could never have imagined...

Have your say (comments)

Yes it was a black day, for Dr Kelly and his family. This attempt to gain sympathy for those responsible makes one wonder how much lower Mrs Blair can go. At least until the next shameless revelation.

D.L. Stephens, York, England

Is this an attempt for sympathy for Bliar.

Dr Kelly's death lays at the foot of Blair. "Sure" he may have slumped back into his seat as she says, but it certainly was not out of concern or sorrow, but knowing he and cronies caused this.

This begs answers whether was suicide. Truth is not out.

ASW, Hong Kong,

surely the man from the mail on sundays question is relevant. the only difference now being "what's it like to have the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on your hands"

paul, London,

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