UK WMD probe to be held in private

[T_i_B]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3484435.stm

The inquiry into intelligence on Iraq before the war will focus on systems rather than the actions of individuals.

The Butler Inquiry has also confirmed that all its hearings will be held in private to avoid giving the public a partial view of the evidence.

Tony Blair called the inquiry after mounting pressure, caused by the American decision to hold an inquiry, the remarks of former weapons inspector David Kay, and the failure to find any weapons stockpiles in Iraq.

Mr Blair has said the judgement on whether military action was right has to stay with politicians rather than being decided by the inquiry. And he has argued the inquiry should not be a re-run of the Hutton report, which cleared the government of embellishing its dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

[acmavm]

1. Blair's just a stupid as Bush*. He thinks the government is his own

little sandbox and he calls the rules and gets to say who can play in it and who can't. I think the British will be a lot more vocal about the secrecy than the spineless sheeple of this country.

[Spentastic]

2. Brilliant

"The Butler Inquiry has also confirmed that all its hearings will be held in private to avoid giving the public a partial view of the evidence."

They even get to rub it in.

THey are covering it up and they just don't care.

[T_i_B]

5. Sad really

We had access to vast swathes of Hutton evidence, and the only lesson Blair appears to have learned from Hutton is that this evidence cannot be given to the people as they might make their own minds up about things and smell a rat if the judgement is not even-handed.

Small wonder so few people trust the Butler enquiry.

[Loonman]

3. I guess there still is a landed and privileged class in the UK

Sad.

Typical, but sad.

Blair is a fake liberal that should be sacked as PM.

[dusty64]

4. All this secrecy

pretty much sums it up, the People aren't completely uninformed. Isn't it ironic that these regimes feel they have the right to absolute privacy while at the same time trying to strip those rights from the citizens.

[JohnyCanuck]

6. Ex Brit. Intelligence officer says,"Blair's claim is simply incredible."

Imagine you are a retired and very proud guards officer watching trooping the colour. How embarrassed and puzzled you would feel if things started to go wrong. Small things, initially, that others not brought up in the system might not notice. The columns of scarlet-clad troops slightly out of sync with the marching music. Some of the orders being given by men in suits rather than by the sergeant majors on parade. I used to work for the defence intelligence staff (DIS) and the Cabinet Office assessments staff - who draft the papers for the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and intelligence reports for No 10 - and that's how I felt during the Hutton inquiry, and how I feel now.

<snip>

But it has recently got even more embarrassing. The prime minister told the House of Commons that he was unaware at the time of the war debate that the 45-minute piece of intelligence referred only to battlefield rather than strategic weapons. Let me list just some of the procedures which must have been executed incorrectly to allow him to be kept in such a state of ignorance at such a crucial time on such a crucial matter when other members of his cabinet (Cook and Hoon) appear to have been in the know.

One: neither Cook nor Hoon saw fit to tell the prime minister, for whatever reason.

Two: the intelligence was not considered important or accurate enough to explain to him in detail - even though it appears in the September 24 dossier at least three times and in the prime minister's own foreword.

Three: Blair had to rely on verbal briefings from the JIC chairman and others, who told him about the 45 minutes bit of the intelligence but omitted to mention that it referred only to battlefield weapons, and neither the prime minister nor any of the brilliant young staff asked the obvious question.


More at:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1146332,00.html

[Briar]

7. With a secret enquiry

there is no way to prove this is not a cover-up. How daft. Never mind the usual drone about secrecy being in the interests of national security: making the remit so narrow was a political decision in the first place. People are bound to assume there has been a whitewash this way. Bliar could only have proved the opposite by setting up a much more wide-ranging enquiry and letting all the evidence be presented for objective assessment. Therefore, the only possible conclusion is that he was afraid of letting the evidence be seen because it would have pointed to his own guilt.

Is Bliar counting on the public to trust him and his mate Pete instead of common sense and reason? Does he seriously believe that we think Hutton's ludicrously biased report exonerated him? What planet is he living on?

[emad]

8. It's time for a little irony.....

Noted the dumbass look on Poodle's face when he inaugurated the UK's version of the FBI last Tuesday - the Serious Organised Crimes Agency. Looks like they are the ones that will bust him and his gargoyle wife when the BCCI class action starts getting interesting in the Royal Courts of Justice later this month.....