Dead British Expert Believed Iraq WMD Posed Threat

[Judi Lynn]

Dead British Expert Believed Iraq WMD Posed Threat
Wed January 21, 2004 09:18 AM ET

(Page 1 of 2)
By Katherine Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) - David Kelly, the weapons expert whose suicide rocked the British government, believed Iraq did pose an immediate threat, the BBC said Wednesday, just days before a critical report into his death.

Kelly told the BBC before the war that Iraq's weapons could have taken "days or weeks" to deploy. But he did not back Prime Minister Tony Blair's notorious claim that they could be fired in 45 minutes.

The failure to find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- the primary Anglo-American motive for war -- has eroded public trust in Blair, putting him in the most precarious position of his six-and-a-half-year premiership.

Next week is crunch time for the beleaguered prime minister.
(snip/....)

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4176773

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that he can't speak for himself?

[underpants]

1. Testimony from the grave

I read the article but that headline got me. That's a classic, I guess they couldn't find anyone alive to agree with them so they got someone who couldn't recant what they say he said.

[Must_B_Free]

2. Kelley was murdered in Blair's interest

Anybody can see that.

[ellie]

3. I guess they shouldn't have

killed him then. See how useful he would have proved to be?

[peekaloo]

4. Quija Board clearly spelled out:

"weapons of mass destruction-related program activities".

:freak:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. I hear Blair wasn't holding his fingers lightly on the planchette.

LOL

[Bozola]

9. lol

Thank gawd for Ouija, otherwise he'd have had to tap it out with castenets strapped to his thighs.....

[DUreader]

5. WMD? WHat WMD? Where are the W*s of MD?

W*s of MD as in Maryland, as in Ft. Dietrich?

[cspiguy]

6. Here it comes Folks!

get ready for 11 months of WMD Really Were There! Everyone Knew it! stories as the Big Lie becomes the Big Historical Fact.

[lumpy]

8. I don't give a shit

what Kelly says from the grave. We know the truth and the damn lies from corrupt scewed people trying to save their political lives just keep coming.

[Briar]

10. "immediate"?

According to the story, Kelly thought the WMD would take at least days, if not weeks, to arm. That's not "immediate" in the sense that Bliar used it - 45 minutes! Kelly also thought that Saddam would only use the WMD if he were desperate and had no other course open to him. (And since he reached and passed this point without using them, we know he didn't have them.) In other words, if attacked.

None of this actually contradicts the basic claim that the government "sexed up" the dossier - it just confirms it. So I don't see why so much fuss is being made, nor why it is being taken (by the ever subservient BBC 1 Panorama programme, no less) to undermine the BBC and shore up the government. It doesn't.

It does, I fear, show that Kelly may have said one thing in public and another in private. This public interview was far less critical of the government than the briefings he gave to Gilligan, Watts and Hewitt (and doubtless others) unattributably. Kelly may have believed himself a man of immaculate integrity, but this suggests he was as human as the rest of us. His "outing" at the insistence of a vengeful PM must have been all the more painful for him...

[daleo]

11. Here's hoping he does a better job

Of recognizing threats in his next lifetime than he did in this last one. I wonder if his last few moments were really free of 'threats'.