Susie Kneedler wasn't able to post the comment below, probably because I've banned so many people today good people got caught in the harrow. Sorry. It's an important comment because it gets at a truth we all knew back when good David Kelly killed himself after valiantly trying to get the BBC to report the truth. Of course the intelligence was getting sexed up. Kneedler:
Robert Fisk wrote a great essay last week on the BBC crumbling before lobby pressure:
What I haven't seen is anyone discussing how the BBC disintegration
began. The BBC fired or "allowed to resign" its heads, Chairman Gavyn
Davies and Director General Greg Dyke, after Andrew Gilligan's [true]
report that the Blair government "sexed up" the evidence of WMD in
Iraq. Gilligan was smeared by an inquisition–commonly called a
"whitewash"–led by Lord Hutton. British weapons expert Dr. David
Kelly was outed by Blair as Gilligan's source; Kelley soon committed
suicide amid the Blairite condemnation.
But last month, "The Independent" and others reported that "Secret Emails Show Iraq Dossier Was 'Sexed Up'"
So the Bush-Blair cover-up not only worked: it took down BBC
journalistic integrity in the process. Has anyone put the facts
together to chronicle the end of a once-admirable news service? We need
press integrity–which takes guts. Fisk has it, loads of other observers have it. Now we need a voice in TV: how about
it, MSNBC?
