Hutton Inquiry

Originally posted by bonkey
Actually, from what I've been reading and hearing his conclusion was that there is no evidence that Blair knew what he was saying was not true, and therefore it cannot be concluded that he was lying.
jc

I'm inclined to wonder though that if Blair knew at the time that there was false information in the dossier, how did he know this?
Who told him, in other words was the case for war at the time sexed up.
I'm veering towards two answers to this.
Either Blair is a brilliant liar and the normally very leaky whitehall has been incredibly watertight on this.
That would seem incredible though.

Or the inteligence services got the thing so very, very wrong.
Given also the nature of public opinion on the "inteligence" services as it stands now and the distrust that this has associated with the Blair government in the eyes a a significant minority of people in Britain...
I find it inconceivable that this could have been part of some great plan, of "make up the inteligence" and shur if we are found out, the job will be done and we'll deal with the consequenses later.
If it was and I doubt it, it has back fired.

At least thats one good thing that has came out of this , it has focused peoples minds, to such an extent that a repeat of British compliance with some great plan for U.S world domination would be difficult.

BattleBoar

On the topic at hand, the questions of the WMD *still* needs to be dealt with. Bonkey is right in the sense that this does not completely vindicate the labour government and Blair from all responsibility. Ultimately, the intelligence on WMD in Iraq at this point has proved to be wrong and the decision to act on intelligence that has proven faulty does not reflect well on the leadership, British or US. There still needs to be an independent inquiry to see how these intelligence agencies could get it so wrong in the first place.

What the report does seem to do is vindicate Blair and his govt against these charges the BBC have made against it as well as raise serious doubts about the editorial standards and credibility of the BBC. Slightly off the subject, but I lost all respect for the BBC when they sacked Kilroy-Silk but did nothing to Tom Paulin. I think a major overhaul of the leadership at the BBC is long overdue, personally.

shotamoose

As for who's come out of it best, well, I think the government's words will eventually come round to bite them in the ass. I heard John Reid being all magnaminous on the Today show this morning, saying that people make mistakes and that it's only right and proper that they own up to them when the truth comes out.

I agree. The BBC in the person of Greg Dyke have done so in this case, and deserve credit for it.

The logical next step is for the government to have an open inquiry of some form into the biggest question left unanswered by Hutton, a question that everybody seems to want answered: did the UK go to war on the basis of an exagerrated threat? Was what the government told the Commons and the people about the threat from Iraq actually true?

Most people now think it wasn't. If the Blair government has any integrity it needs to establish the answer and, if it is found to have made a mistake, it needs to own up to it and say sorry. Otherwise all this post-Hutton talk of 'the truth will set you free!' is just more spin bollocks.

Oh and one final question: why does Andrew Gilligan still have a job at the BBC?

DMC

Greg Dyke doesn't anymore.

Johnny_the_fox

Originally posted by DMC
Greg Dyke doesn't anymore.

:eek: they are dropping like flies....

BBC director general stands down

Éomer of Rohan

Having listened to the parliamentary summary ot the Hutton report by Lord Hutton himself around lunchtime yesterday, on BBC Radio Ulster, and despite my misgivings about what his report says, the most worrying thing in my opinion is that the journalistic teeth of the BBC will be severely curtailed by the amount of high level resignations and the government's persistence in their call for a 'greater apology' than the statement that was read out yesterday.

The fact remains, the Governors of the BBC didn't do their job to the extent that the government would have liked it done and the peice by Gilligan was badly done - it should have been phrased as a doubt rather than fact, BUT this is no reason to go all out against the BBC as the current Government spin machine is doing.

What is more worrying still for those concerned with the state of British politics is that the replacements for the resigning employees of the BBC are Tories and it has been voiced by more than one commentator that Tony is very pleased with this.

bonkey

Originally posted by Man
I'm inclined to wonder though that if Blair knew at the time that there was false information in the dossier, how did he know this?
Who told him, in other words was the case for war at the time sexed up.

Who knows. Thats ultimately - for me - where the problem comes in....

The Hutton report lambasts the BBC for not investigating beyond their sources sufficiently, to the extent that they accepted information as being true, based on insufficient grounds to actually be held up.

At the same time, Hutton does not criticise the British government for having accepted information as true which was without sufficient corroboration etc. to be able to stand up.

So, what seems to be the conclusion of this report is that its ok to commit your country to war on information you believe - but have not verified - to be correct, but it is an unthinkable travesty to print a story on the subject on information you believe - but have not verified - to be correct.

IN other words, the requirement for the press to be correct in what it prints is more stringent in Hutton's eyes than the need for a government to be correct on what it commits itself to war for....

Weird.

jc

Éomer of Rohan

Quoted from bonkey
At the same time, Hutton does not criticise the British government for having accepted information as true which was without sufficient corroboration etc. to be able to stand up.

So, what seems to be the conclusion of this report is that its ok to commit your country to war on information you believe - but have not verified - to be correct, but it is an unthinkable travesty to print a story on the subject on information you believe - but have not verified - to be correct.

IN other words, the requirement for the press to be correct in what it prints is more stringent in Hutton's eyes than the need for a government to be correct on what it commits itself to war for....

To be fair, while I don't believe that there ARE WMD and don't believe there ever where AND believe that both governments knew there weren't any, I do think your statement a little premature - who knows what they'll find before the Americans pull out. Mind you, who knows when the Americans are going to pull out at all lol? And then again, who's to say they won't plant something?

Piliger

As posted above, Hutton's career demonstrates many decades upholding the rule of law in Northern Ireland dealing with heinous terrorists correctly with complete integrity as well as admirable involvement in recent affairs where he distinguished himself. His life as part of the establishment made him wonderfully suited to producing an independent trustworthy report considering that the BBC is the establishment party to the affair and the Government was accusing it of lying. All in all an excellent choice.
The BBC were found out to have accused the Gov of lying based on fictitious grounds and then spending six months repeating those lies everytime they defended them. It has been a disgraceful performance by the BBC management who's knee jerk reaction was to raise the barricades and repeat the lies rather than actually investigate the truth of their reporting.

Today on the BBC and other tv channels we had a series of incestuous round table interviews and discussions where journalists interviewed journalists and editors who inevitably raised the same barricades with righteous indignation that anyone should judge their profession at all and dragged out the ultimate red herring now that they have been exposed, of the WMD question. What a wonderful distraction. So convenient. Andrew Neil was outraged that anyjudgement or restriction be placed on journalists who should be free to do whatever they felt was right without answering to anyone, even heir editors, for the accuracy or reliability of their sources.
We also heard repeatedly the creation of false scares right across the journalistic spectrum, of the danger of political comment and journalism being blunted, of Jeremy Paxman being blunted. What a load of transparent spin by the experts in spin, the journalists, editors and reporters.
The truth is that the BBC have been found of lying and laziness. There was no criticism of them being critical of the Gov, or being too aggresive. But it creates a great scare to raise this as a great 'fear'.

Like any other Government, Blair & co have and had no way of knowing or finding out if the intelligence delivered to them by the Interlligence Service is accurate or not. They are politicians. They can only act on what they are told to be true. They did so, admirably, and have been found to have acted totally correctly.
It is clear to anyone interested in a balanced view of the truth that the Intelligence services on both sides of the atlantic may have something to answer for if no WMD is found in the next couple of years, but as far as Hutton goes I hope that the BBC jettisons it's recently adopted policy of mimicing the trash journalism practiced by so many newspapers.

Éomer of Rohan

Quoted from Piliger
As posted above, Hutton's career demonstrates many decades upholding the rule of law in Northern Ireland dealing with heinous terrorists correctly with complete integrity as well as admirable involvement in recent affairs where he distinguished hi

Also known as the Widgery Report. Need I say more?

Piliger

Originally posted by Éomer of Rohan
Also known as the Widgery Report. Need I say more?

Absolutely not. An admirable job carried out with total integrity.

Sparks

Originally posted by Piliger
Absolutely not. An admirable job carried out with total integrity.

And his decision to overturn the ruling that Pinochet could be arrested and tried on the grounds that the judge who issued the ruling had ties to Amnesty International?

hallelujajordan

Originally posted by bonkey

So, what seems to be the conclusion of this report is that its ok to commit your country to war on information you believe - but have not verified - to be correct, but it is an unthinkable travesty to print a story on the subject on information you believe - but have not verified - to be correct.

IN other words, the requirement for the press to be correct in what it prints is more stringent in Hutton's eyes than the need for a government to be correct on what it commits itself to war for....

Weird.

jc

Nonsense . . . the report makes no conclusions with regard to the basis Blair had or did not have for going to war . . . If you read his report, Lord Hutton is quite explicit in defining his terms of reference and these terms of reference specifically excluded this question . . .

This will be a matter for another inquiry!

bonkey

Originally posted by Éomer of Rohan
To be fair, while I don't believe that there ARE WMD and don't believe there ever where AND believe that both governments knew there weren't any, I do think your statement a little premature - who knows what they'll find before the Americans pull out. Mind you, who knows when the Americans are going to pull out at all lol? And then again, who's to say they won't plant something?

Yeah..but Dave...I never said they were wrong. I said that the criticism was about the lack of certainty and verification. It is undeniable that the UK (and US) govts most certainly had not properly verified their information....which is exactly what the BBC was lambasted for.

jc

projectmayhem

hutton is causing a lot of trouble, not least because the public are disillusioned with his findings, possibly because the public would rather stand behind the bbc then the government. i somehow doubt this will be the end of it, but tony blair certainly looks like a happy bunny, for now.

the question is now not wether there are/was sufficiant evidence of wmd's in iraq, it's now a question of when is the right time to enter into a war, with what grounds and with what reason. if blair and bush had said that saddam needs to stop killing people and "we're going in there to rid iraq of a tyrant" rather then " we need to rid saddam of wmd's", would we have a different situation?

hallelujajordan

Originally posted by bonkey
It is undeniable that the UK (and US) govts most certainly had not properly verified their information....which is exactly what the BBC was lambasted for.

jc

Again . . . this is just not true . . . the rights or wrongs of how the information was verified was never a subject of argument between the BBC and the government and was not a subject of the Hutton Inquiry . . The BBC were lambasted (and I think quite rightly) because they accused the government of lying to parliament and to the people. . . of knowingly adding information to the dossier that they knew not to be correct . . The Hutton inquiry has shown that these accusations were without basis in fact !!

tricky D

The Guardian has dug up some good info on the propaganda unit (Operation Rockingham) and Kelly's involvement which unsurprisingly didn't make it to the Inquiry.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,13822,1134826,00.html
Another thought: isn't the whole notion of the dossier an act of sexing up the war?

Piliger

Originally posted by Sparks
And his decision to overturn the ruling that Pinochet could be arrested and tried on the grounds that the judge who issued the ruling had ties to Amnesty International?

His job was to uphold the law - not make a moral judgement.

That's why we and they have judges, and to condemn a judge for upholding a law that you don't agree with it rediculous imho.

Piliger

Originally posted by bonkey It is undeniable that the UK (and US) govts most certainly had not properly verified their information....which is exactly what the BBC was lambasted for.
jc [/B]

Wrong. There was no evidence in the Hutton enquiry whatsoever about whatever methods or sources that the intelligence services may or may not have used to gather information about Saddam and his regime and WMD. The Hutton enquiry didn't cover that and wasn't supposed to cover that.

tricky D

His job was to uphold the law - not make a moral judgement.

That's why we and they have judges, and to condemn a judge for upholding a law that you don't agree with it rediculous imho.

Missing the point(s) perhaps, which is that Hutton appears to usually come down on the side of the state, not the public good as he would have you believe, across a spectrum of cases and so is a good choice for any Gov on the back foot.

The Pinochet overturn was so made because a judge had ties to Amnesty, so what. The judiciary is well capable of seperating their own bias and opinions from legal practice every day of the week, just like so many others of us who have to leave some of their own personal thoughts, ethics and morality at home while working. Why should a judge be ruled against because of his private freedom of association with an org which tries to uphold human rights laws. A judge being ruled against for promoting the law and/or what's right, hmm.

sovtek

Originally posted by shotamoose
We now know that the 45-minute claim is unfounded. But we don't know that Tony Blair and his government knew it was wrong when they published it (Jesus, this is starting to sound like an episode of Yes Minister).

But that doesn't seem to be the case.
IIRC Hutton refers to a JIC document as the source of the 45 minute claim, and it was from a single source refering to conventional munitions. Scarlett said so himself.
Now, being that anyone with an internet connection and access to Google knew that the claim was bull****...how can Hutton criticize Gilligan and not Blair and Campbell?
Thats together with the majority of the dossier using a doctorial thesis as the basis.
Sorry when it looks like it, smells like it....whitewash!

shotamoose

Originally posted by sovtek
But that doesn't seem to be the case.
IIRC Hutton refers to a JIC document as the source of the 45 minute claim, and it was from a single source refering to conventional munitions. Scarlett said so himself.
Now, being that anyone with an internet connection and access to Google knew that the claim was bull****...how can Hutton criticize Gilligan and not Blair and Campbell?
Sorry when it looks like it, smells like it....whitewash!

Yes, the original intelligence was single-sourced and referred to 'battlefield' weapons. But there's no evidence that Blair himself actually read the original intelligence. AFAIK, what he saw was filtered first through the intelligence assessment team reporting to the JIC and then through John Scarlett, the head of the JIC.

The initial drafts of the September dossier which Scarlett sent up to Blair and co. make no mention of the 45 minute claim being single-sourced only referring to battlefield weapons.

So it's impossible to say that Blair knew the claim was misleading. You could make a reasonable guess that he knew it was ambiguous and decided not to try to narrow or it down, just as you could guess that he knew other aspects were ambiguous (e.g. Iraq 'may' be able to deploy these weapons) and decided to narrow them down in his favour (to: Iraq 'is' able to deploy these weapons).

Thats together with the majority of the dossier using a doctorial thesis as the basis.

Wasn't that the 'dodgy dossier' of February 2003?

sovtek

Originally posted by shotamoose Yes, the original intelligence was single-sourced and referred to 'battlefield' weapons. But there's no evidence that Blair himself actually read the original intelligence. AFAIK, what he saw was filtered first through the intelligence assessment team reporting to the JIC and then through John Scarlett, the head of the JIC.

But that's from John Scarlett himself. Now I assume it's possible that he never told Blair that...but that should'nt have excluded Blair or Campbell from criticism.

The initial drafts of the September dossier which Scarlett sent up to Blair and co. make no mention of the 45 minute claim being single-sourced only referring to battlefield weapons.

According to Straw they weren't even in the initial draft of the dossier.

So it's impossible to say that Blair knew the claim was misleading.

If you narrow your scope of investigation as much as possible....yes it would then be impossible to say whether Blair knew or not.

You could make a reasonable guess that he knew it was ambiguous and decided not to try to narrow or it down, just as you could guess that he knew other aspects were ambiguous (e.g. Iraq 'may' be able to deploy these weapons) and decided to narrow them down in his favour (to: Iraq 'is' able to deploy these weapons).

In other words he knew it could be misleading.
My mother would have grounded me for doing that.
Anyway, I see your point but I think that the Hutton Inquiry was set to narrow it's scope so much as to make sure that no definitive answer could be given and then apply a different set of standards to find that the BBC wasn't above reproach.

Wasn't that the 'dodgy dossier' of February 2003?

Yea got them confused. Appy polly geez

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Cork

The BBC is not the official opposition to New Labour.

BBC has lost much creditability.

BBC World service is excellant.

The Website is top class.

BBC has the US has over 11 million viewers.

The Office has just won a Golden Globe.

But most definiately - its credability has been seriously damaged.

They will bounce back with time.

DMC

And Gilligan has gone back to his island....

Gilligan quits BBC over Kelly row

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Piliger

Originally posted by tricky D
..Hutton appears to usually come down on the side of the state, not the public good as he would have you believe, across a spectrum of cases and so is a good choice for any Gov on the back foot.

I don't believe that for a moment. The reason the State ends up right more often than not is because they are right more often than not. That is perfectly reasonable because of the very nature of the state/gov. Hutton's record is exemplory.

The Pinochet overturn was so made because a judge had ties to Amnesty, so what.

Wrong. It was made because the law was the way it was and that's what Hutton had to keep to. I was vehemently against the decision and vociferously against Pinochet whom I would have loved to have seen hanging by his balls on Tower Hill. But attacking the judge is just rediculous. Changing the law is way to go.

Piliger

Originally posted by daveirl
YouGov Poll says people believe Hutton was a whitewash.

What a surprise when the media comes out in the most astonishing show of power over the last couple of days.
We have seen the mass gathering of thousands of BBC journalists get together with those in newspapers and television to gang together and attack the Hutton report in a disturbing antidemocratic movement of defiance.

The people rely on the media for their information about the world and what is going on. They rely on getting reasonably accurate and unbiased information - yet what has happened is that a huge majority of journalists across all media, whose job it is to deliver this information, have collectively decided that they refuse to be judged and that they will raise any possible diversion and make any kind of accusation possible in a gigantic spin machine to camaflage the guilt of the BBC for lying repeatedly.

It is an amazing act of arrogance which will come back to haunt the people in the future, in my opinion. Such power by the collective media and such willingness to use it in the face of a widely respected law lord's enquiry is unprecedented and deeply worrying.

It should also be worrying to people who agree with them - because what happens the next time ? when you don't .... ?

DMC

So, would any other broadcaster, newspaper or media outlet in the world broadcast the Panorama programme the BBC broadcast last week about the Hutton Report, and do it is such a way that instead of naval-gazing you would attack the channel you are actually broadcasting on?? I can't see NBC having an exposé on GE etc.

The people rely on the media for their information about the world and what is going on. They rely on getting reasonably accurate and unbiased information - yet what has happened is that a huge majority of journalists across all media, whose job it is to deliver this information, have collectively decided that they refuse to be judged and that they will raise any possible diversion and make any kind of accusation possible in a gigantic spin machine to camaflage the guilt of the BBC for lying repeatedly.

Remember, its not the newspapers or journalists thats the issue with regard to what you have just said. Newspapers in the UK are allowed to have political views, and their own views on the BBC, and quite often air them. TV and Radio do not. The BBC had to report impartially on their own crisis. So if you wanted a fair and unbiased report, ITN or Channel 4 News or even Sky News, dont look at the press.

This report is cleaner than clean for the UK Government, it has harmed them even more than if there was a few resignations from the Government side, because it is that white for them its blinding.