July 19, 2003

SILENCED

I can’t be bothered checking, but Indymedia’s conspiracy meter must be redlining at the moment.

UPDATE. It begins:

So it could be that the Blair government and its agencies is now following the example of the Bush family, government and agencies in simply murdering people who represent a threat to the regime Dicounting the British Marconi scientists and virologists who have mysteriously died in the past, is this to be the first of many?

Blair is frontman for the hidden government
He puts out the required propaganda and will do until his public demise (quite soon it would appear)
Dr Kelly may well have been doing an unpleasant job at the service of this agenda.
He was also accused of leaking - perhaps he had a fragment of conscience.
He maybe proved himself a threat with too much knowledge
And he suddenly appears dead

You can bet HM security services won't hesitate to murder any british citizen who poses an embarrassment to powerful brit establishment and government figures such as tinpot totalitarian tony blair.

It seems mightily coincendental that the one man who might be able to lend some serious weight to the BBC's assertions concerning the Iraq dossier is now found dead lying in the woods.

If it is found that he was murdered then it will show that Blairs government is increasingly becoming more desperate in its bid to clear its name of war crimes, so deperate that it is willing kill its own citizens.

Spin Ali and Holls Hoon are directly responsible for the disappearance of Dr. Kelly.

Posted by Tim Blair at July 19, 2003 02:07 AM
Comments

Ah, yes, the large leftist membership of the Loyal Oliver Stone Exegesis and Rationalization Society should be all over this one...

Posted by: E.A. at July 19, 2003 at 02:28 AM

I think the Beeb did it to protect their story. How's that for a conspiracy. (Maybe we should check and see if there is a small pellet in his leg.)

Posted by: JorgXMcKie at July 19, 2003 at 02:40 AM

Yep, my first thought was that reporter Gilligan must have offed him in order to protect his story. . . or maybe it was "the Skipper."

Posted by: Polly at July 19, 2003 at 03:01 AM

Grocery stores are selling out of tinfoil as we speak....

Posted by: RJGator at July 19, 2003 at 03:12 AM

It's quite ghoulish, I know, but I find when something the 'conspiracy nutz' will use happens, it's so interesting to read their drivel.

Some of the Usenet groups can be most entertaining to read. Can't take them for too long, but in short doses are good for a laugh.

When that Democrat US Senator's plane went down recently (can't recall name) they went crazy talking about how Pres. Bush used the military, HAARP, Aliens form Roswell, etc. to down the plane. It was fun stuff to read.

I'm sorry this man died. But, I can't wait to see what the nutz have to say. They can come up with some of the *most* convoluted scenerios.

(Don't mean to offend anyone.)

Posted by: Chris Josephson at July 19, 2003 at 05:00 AM

The conspiracy party's already started over at the Guardian's site, whose reaction to the man's death was the headline, "Tragic Price of Contempt for Free Press." (Do a search; I'm lazy.)

Mmm, I smell crushing of dissent!

Posted by: ilyka at July 19, 2003 at 05:00 AM

"The conspiracy party's already started over at the Guardian's site, whose reaction to the man's death was the headline, "Tragic Price of Contempt for Free Press." (Do a search; I'm lazy.)"

Since this is about the BBC, I have to ask how a state sponsored media organmization supported by stringent and mandatory taxes is free?

Posted by: Ryan at July 19, 2003 at 05:08 AM

Lets be fair here. The timing is quite odd and it is not unreasonable to hear of this at and be thinking hmmmmmm lets keep an eye on this.

Now of course the left will not bother with the "keep an eye on this" stage and will jump to the "This proves that the war was false and Bush and Blair are bigger killers than Saddam ever was!!!" stage.

Oddly enough (to steal a line from Reuters) it is such a jump that would make it harder to find out if there is funny business involved as it would allow the "Oh this is just the Nazimedia crowd going wacko." statement to dismiss any who think so.

However as that crowd is really only interested in the gravy train they ride funded by rich guilt ridden Anglo's and easly fooled young folks restraint will not be possible for them.

Even if foul play is involved it does not alter the correctness of the war and the case for it.

Posted by: Peter Ingemi at July 19, 2003 at 07:41 AM

ALthough we are still pretty light on facts (suicide? murder? natural causes?), it is interesting to ask "cui bono?"

Assuming this guy was the source for Gilligan, it is hard to see how Blair/Bush could possibly benefit from killing him. He had already done his damage, and his death only gives the story more legs and a higher profile.

Which leads to the conclusion that, if anyone killed him, it must have been to further damage Bush/Blair. That hardly narrows the field, but it does suggest some intriguing possibilities.

Posted by: T. Hartin at July 19, 2003 at 10:01 AM

Oddly enough I was blogging on this one last night. I didn't see the story popping up on Indymedia just yet (doubtless it is by this morning), but, even better- I accidently discovered that Indymedia has reams of stuff on how the Moon landings where faked. ;-)

Heh.

Posted by: wilbur at July 19, 2003 at 11:14 AM

Miss Moneypenney, will you, please, call Mr Bond in here immediatley. This is of the utmost gravest urgency.

Posted by: NICK BERIO at July 19, 2003 at 12:34 PM

It kind of reminds me of when the space shuttle Columbia disintergrated on its first flight with Israeli-born nuclear disarmanent activist Ilan Ramon on board. It was one heck of a coincidence, and the main thing convincing people it was just an accident was that no-one hostile to Israel had the capability to destroy a shuttle that high up. (But what about North Korea's space-based mirror???)

Posted by: Andjam at July 19, 2003 at 02:11 PM

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Update: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Posted by: Ken Summers at July 19, 2003 at 03:01 PM

I sincerely[mphhh] apolog[snicker]ize for that[snort] unwar[heh]ranted outburHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Damn, my ribs hurt.

Posted by: Ken Summers at July 19, 2003 at 03:04 PM

I was confused there for a minute, wondering how long Our Tim had been the frontman for the Hidden Government™.

Oh, the other Blair. Right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 19, 2003 at 11:04 PM

David Kelly was head of the microbiology unit at Porton Down (the UK's biodefense research facility) from 1984 to 1992. During that period (in 1988), Iraq tried to acquire the Ames strain of anthrax from Porton Down, at a time when the West was backing Iraq in its war against Iran.

Ames is the strain found in the anthrax letters of 2001. It has been argued at length at the conservative site FreeRepublic.com (by poster "The Great Satan", currently suspended) that the Bush administration engineered the idea that the anthrax letters were of domestic origin, rather than part of 9/11. TGS argued that this move was strategically and tactically necessary in order to ultimately remove Saddam.

But just suppose that the USA *did* pass Ames to Iraq, via Porton Down, back in 1988; and that David Kelly was one of the small circle who knew. Is it unthinkable that someone else in that circle might have sought to silence him, before he could *really* spill the beans?

Posted by: mitch at July 20, 2003 at 12:29 AM

"Determining who was responsible for 9-11 is simple. Just ask yourself, 'Who benefitted the most from it?' That's right, THE FLAG INDUSTRY. They MUST have engineered 9-11 to sell all those American flags!"

I haven't been a fan of "cui bono" thinking since that...

Posted by: Tatterdemalian at July 20, 2003 at 02:09 AM

Okay, so his testimony before Parliament went badly. He works for the government, and it might be hard for him to get another job. He's got a good chance of getting fired, so he kills himself. Seems most likely to me.

Posted by: John Nowak at July 20, 2003 at 04:37 AM

The guy was an extremely senior figure. Again, he headed the UK's biowarfare unit for eight years. On top of that, he ran the post-cold-war biological inspections in Russia for several years, and then advised the UN in Iraq. He had friends and colleagues around the world.

Posted by: mitch at July 20, 2003 at 09:56 AM

"Friends and colleagues around the world"? Well, that's grounds for assassination in itself! (Adjusts tinfoil hat. Always use Reynolds Wrap, it's the best.)

Posted by: Andrea Harris at July 20, 2003 at 11:53 AM

The point is that it should not have been hard for him to get another job. He had a huge support network, should he have needed it. And on reading his testimony, I see no indication that he felt hounded.

Just to spell things out, this is the scenario I propose. Back in the late 1980s, the West covertly assisted Iraq's unconventional weapons programs in order to defeat Iran. David Kelly, in his capacity as head of microbiology at Porton Down, played a part in transferring Ames-strain anthrax to Iraqi scientists. When Ames showed up in the anthrax letters of 2001, it became absolutely clear that Saddam had to be overthrown and not just contained; but it was too damaging to admit the full story. So the CIA debunked anything linking Iraq to Al Qaeda, and the FBI was sent in search of a "rogue right-wing scientist", while every other imaginable *casus belli* against Iraq was given prominence. A war was fought, Saddam was overthrown, and everything might have ended there, but for the continuing failure to turn up the WMDs. This led to the hunt for evidence of "politicized intelligence"; and when the politicians and the press started grilling David Kelly in particular, it unnerved someone enough that they silenced him for good.

Posted by: mitch at July 20, 2003 at 02:58 PM

On reflection, I suppose that most of my scenario could be true, and it could still have been suicide.

Posted by: mitch at July 20, 2003 at 03:10 PM

I read the story and thought "Poor man, must have been too much pressure" The thought the evil right wing forces may have killed him never entered my mind. I had no idea there were that many paranoid people around.

If the government of Britain or the US were to go to the extreme of killing someone to silence them, why not just discredit them, frame them with a crime, put a heap of child pornography on his hard drive etc etc.

If finding WMD was that important and they knew they never existed, why not just plant them - no one would have questioned them - easier and less controversial that killing someone, and would have prevented criticism from ever starting. Altogether a far more effective strategy.

Fair dinkum people, belief in conspiracy theories is the first sign of insanity.

Saddam had weapons, for christ sake he used them, no one denies that, who knows or cares where they are. Saddam is gone, there was none of the catastrophic fallout predicted by the left and an evil bastard is gone. The right were right - get over it.

Tony BLAIR cannot cover up his wifes shonky association's, let alone an assassination.

Let the poor tormented bloke rest in peace.

Posted by: Gilly at July 20, 2003 at 04:54 PM

Eh, of course it was suicide. He was hounded to death. Blair is in deep shit over this, and rightly so.

Posted by: Bon Scott at July 20, 2003 at 11:09 PM

Why is it *Blair* that is in trouble? At the hearings, Kelly denied doubting the dossier or being a "fall guy". That pulls the rug from under the BBC *and* Blair's opponents, it seems to me.

Posted by: mitch at July 21, 2003 at 11:58 AM

You're right there mitch, though I can't see much in your earlier comments to agree with.

The news that Kelly was the BBC's source for the "sexed-up" dossier story turns the spotlight back on Gilligan and the BBC.

Posted by: George Junior at July 21, 2003 at 01:18 PM