This Genie ain't gonna be rubbed no more

Rubbing the lamp

When the news broke from the chambers of Judge Hutton that the government had been completely exonerated from the scandal of lying to the public about the 45-minute claim many could be forgiven for thinking that ended the whole issue.

Nay! My friends, Nay! What Tony Blair was cleared of narrowly pertained to the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly and nothing about the greater issue of why we went to war.

For one, Mr Blair might as well have been on a treasure hunt two weekends ago and had found the legendary Aladdin's lamp.

The two escapes relating to the tuition fees and Judge Hutton's report were the two stipulated wishes of the genie.

After too many rubs, releases and recaptures, the genie had renegotiated the escape clause of offering just two wishes instead of the usual three.

Methinks the lamp is ready for another rub to produce a lot of smoke but no wish.

Smoking out the facts

Dubbiyew having seen the amazing Houdini of Great Britain rolling lots of BBC heads instead of his and those of his cohorts asked for a rub of the lamp too.

He wants to know the facts about the intelligent or lack of it that was so strenuously argued before congress, before Americans and before the UN in the quest for a coalition of the cajoled who would not be cowed.

Dubbiyew, you cannot handle the truth – one risks quoting Jack Nicholson during a fiery cross-examination by Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men.

If any good men come of out learning the truth from the real facts of why we went to war, they are most probably deserving of a posthumous decoration.

The Awful Truth

The purveyor of a certain programme called The Awful Truth contends that the truth is too awful to contemplate.

The ex-chief of the Iraq Survey Group – David Kay – has unruffled too uncomfortably the feathers of the vested interests that rammed us into the Iraqi quagmire; like quicksand; we are stuck and the more we struggle the more the concrete solidifies well above the torso.

In a last gasp of credulity, symbolising that exclusively close relationship between Great Britain and the United States, Tony Blair and George W. Bush had decided to announce an inquiry into the whole intelligence debacle.

Wishing for a star

Only this time, the wishes have run out; to think they would weather the storm with the same aplomb as the British Houdini came out of last week is as wishful as the caveman who clobbered Beagle 2 as it landed gingerly on Mars. Evidence of life on Mars.

There is no doubt that the intelligence that supported the war persuasion efforts was unreliable, dated, exaggerated and uncorroborated.

Very much, like Andrew Gilligan's claims that lead to the death of Dr Kelly and the Hutton report.

However, if you are not in a position of great authority, you cannot get away with little lies, whilst those in authority can without scruples.

Like the Hutton report, expect surprises but be wary of the accepted truth.

Judge Hutton's "First stone" judgment

Next time just keep breathing

For weeks, we waited anxiously for the final words that would clear the air regarding the circumstances around Dr David Kelly's death.

After the verdict came, we could have continued breathing as normal all along, because none of the presumed guilty were daubed by the least of criticisms. Instead, the BBC, the public organ and bastion of global broadcasting found itself bereft of both a chairman and director-general in the space of 24 hours.

This was a pyrrhic sort of victory for the Mr Tony Blair, Mr Geoff Hoon and the maharajah of spin, the erstwhile Director of Communications – Alastair Campbell, in that they were comprehensively exonerated on all counts in view of the narrowest scope of the Hutton inquiry.

For one fault of the BBC, it was scalped, maligned, besmirched, debased and practically ridiculed. Judge Hutton might not have realised the repercussions but there be many, that he has nonetheless inflicted, which happens to be 70; just as he is.

BBC will still be here afterwards

For one, 70 years of BBC would go on to be 140 years with all the dramatis personae dead, buried and most definitely forgotten to the importance of the issues of the day.

Mr Blair could have stood 10 feet tall at the pronouncements, but it simply stressed with no let the need to realise that a man's life was forfeited for the sake of a failing government's honour. No much difference from the inhumanity meted out to women in the Indian/Pakistani rural areas regarding honour killings.

Why we went to war on the basis of evidence shaking to bits like a town hit by an earthquake registering 8.3 on the Richter scale.

Public opinion differs

In a court larger than the chambers wherein Judge Hutton had his deliberations, one is met with a certain bewilderment as to how the BBC took so much flack and everyone else got a sweet, a pat, a prize or a commendation.

Dr David Kelly who was sacrificed on the wobbly altar of the dodgy dossier might as well be offered up a sweet smelling savour of a judicial inquiry on the whole war debate and why we were so strongly persuaded to distraction about the elusive Weapons on Mass Destruction.

Casting the first stone

However, on another view, there was once a woman who committed adultery punishable by stoning to death. The man of the time was Jesus, to whom the accusers being great professors of law brought the offender seeking Jesus' of the law of the time.

Crime and punishment being the crucible on which society has burnished civilisation, Jesus pronounced the required judgement but one the proviso that the one without sin cast the first stone.

Now, He, Jesus could have offered to cast the first stone, being without sin, but He was not one of the accusers.

Let it be known, that the first stone may not have killed the woman, probably not even touched her, but each successive stone would have brought great pain and death so slowly and unfailingly – no man's heart being touched on the premise that the victim has been sacrificed on the altar of societal decency.

However, a conviction swept over the accusers and each one from the oldest to the youngest realised their frailty of sin and left without as much of a mutter.

Left alone with woman, Jesus enquired of her accusers having busied Himself with doodling in the sand all the while. Jesus then said, "Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more".

The caption picture

In the case of Dr Kelly, the BBC did cast the first stone in publishing the report about the 45-minute claim, which might have been unfounded, but that first stone was not what killed Dr Kelly.

It is the machinations of the Ministry of Defence; skulduggery of Downing Street; the lobbyist apparatus that pervades the politics of the day and the craving for credibility, which would have made no difference to our perception of the way New Labour has spun every event into a whirlwind tornado

Those issues altogether created the unbearable situation in which Dr Kelly found himself and led to his committing suicide.

In the name of justice and all it represents, for Judge Hutton to have seen only the slinging of the first stone and pronounced the victim dead regardless of the damage caused by other stones is wanting in judicious expertise to say the least.

Thankfully, the judge was never in the position that Jesus was in to pronounce the proviso to judgement; one might say in view of certain comments made about Dr Kelly by the judge –

"Shoot him down with a WMD for briefing beyond his remit".

He would have proclaimed from the bench.