Tim Blair

Happily, Wilkie made a complete dick of himself at the inquiry. The entire transcript is available at the address below if anyone is interested.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/cgi-bin/dialogserverTSO

He was a slightly weird, arrogant fuck when he was a Captain Instructor at Duntroon. Looks like he hasn't changed much.

As Cadets we didn't mind a little arrogance here and there, especially from the Tankies, because they were superior to everybody, and from the Aviators, because its genetic with them, but coming from a green slime - no way.

I've just started reading the transcript, man it's funny. You can almost feel the sarcasm of Sir John Stanley when he responds to Wilkie trying to side step a question "Could I ask you to go back to my question, if you would be kind. This is a very important document for the Committee. You made this accusation of exaggeration and this is the base written document of the British Government" Hah! BTW the address is http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/uc813-vi/uc81302.htm

If anyone knows, I'd be interested as to where I can access the 'secret report' Andrew Bolt is referring to. I've become so used to bloggers that I get pissed off with the lack of linking in neandermedia.

Wilkie also errs in his assertion that for the regime to re-establish WMD programme from scratch, on the assumption production WMDS had been finished,would have been a `huge undertaking'.

Chemical and biological weapons are cheap to produce. The more expensive bit is only the delivery mechanism al la rocketry, which the regime was developing until it was over-run by the three anglos.

How cheap? one recalls the footage of retreived video in Afghanistan of AlQeda experiments with chemical compounds.
What we are talking about , after all, is just a size of science apparatus slightly larger than those used in high schools.The two lab trucks found in Iraq says it all.

Production of biological agents is eqally in-expensive.Since the process is the cultivation of such as anthrax cultures.

But, on delivery mechanisms, excepting military usage, expensive mechanisms are not required which made the prospect of chemical and biolgical agents provided by Saddam to terrorists appalling.
Laslty, while concentrating on biological-chemical wmds, the media has passed over in silence the confirmation, by discovery, of the underground nuclear facility, built by the French.
In other words, the regime did have a nuclear weapons production factory.

Supply of fissionable material is clearly not a problem.As has been demonstrated, if there is a supplier of material, it is relatively easy to smuggle such material accross borders: hence the concern over security of storage sites in the Russias.

As Bolt siad , in his ONA report Wilkie proceeded on the assumption Saddam did have WMDS, and that Wilkies field was estimates of implications humanitarian concerns, many related tot he prospect of Saddam using WMDs.

Bolt is proper when he said , `...with hindsight...'For pre-planning , to range through possiblities including the worst that might eventuate is not unreasonable, if confined to just that: a scenario ranged with others.

Bolt really nails it here:

"Wilkie, honestly using his judgment, got all that wrong. Yet he wanted us to trust his judgment on something he was not expert in -- Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. And to trust him above all his colleagues."

Is Wilkie even worth a comment?

You're right , Norman. It is worth musing , however, Wilkie has managed in short span to turn himself into a walking joke.He needed someone to advise him to keep his trap closed and his curious opinions concealed deep within his grey noodles there forever to sleep.