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-- Yet another twist.
Yet another twist.
Funny how it always comes back to the media. Sounds more like bad reporting than bad policy to me.
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| BBC's Gilligan Admits Errors in Iraq Report Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Gilligan, a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter, admitted to mistakes in a story that said the government exaggerated the case for war in Iraq and during the political row that followed. Gilligan, giving evidence to Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of government weapons scientist David Kelly, also said the BBC had made errors in defending his story against government denials, and apologised for briefing the lawmakers who questioned Kelly in the week of his death. After meeting with Kelly, Gilligan reported in May that officials ``probably knew it was wrong'' for Prime Minister Tony Blair to have stated in a September dossier that Iraq had chemical and biological arms ready to use at 45-minutes' notice. ``I do regret the words as spoken and I shouldn't have said them,'' Gilligan told Hutton's London courtroom. ``It wasn't intended, it was a kind of a slip of the tongue.'' Since Gilligan's report in May and Kelly's death in July, Blair has seen his popularity slump as he struggles to throw off suggestions he went to war on a false premise. Questions about the credibility of the public broadcasting corporation will help Blair's government. Hutton's inquiry has heard that while some mid-ranking intelligence analysts had doubts about the 45-minute assertion, it was endorsed by senior intelligence officials, including Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. Criticism by Hutton The manner of Gilligan's original reporting ``gives the impression that it was the whole of the intelligence services'' that objected to parts of Blair's dossier, Hutton said, suggesting he'll find fault with the BBC in his final report, due next month. Richard Sambrook, BBC head of news, also appeared before Hutton and admitted errors in the corporation's record. Jonathan Sumption, a lawyer representing the government, asked Sambrook if he accepted that Gilligan's report had ``attacked the good faith of the government.'' ``On reflection, I can see that,'' Sambrook replied, adding that in retrospect, he thought Gilligan's story should have been vetted by senior editors and a legal adviser before it was broadcast. `Paints in Primary Colors' Sambrook also raised doubts about Gilligan's accuracy as a journalist, calling him ``a reporter who paints in primary colours rather than something more subtle.'' Kelly was found dead with a slit wrist in July, two days after facing a parliamentary committee's inquiry into the case for war. After his death, the BBC confirmed Gilligan used a meeting with Kelly as the basis for his story. In one broadcast in May, Gilligan described the origin of his report as an ``intelligence service source.'' Kelly was not a member of the intelligence services, though he worked with them. ``It was a mistake,'' Gilligan said, adding that he had only made the statement once and not repeated it in other broadcasts. Still, other BBC statements after Gilligan's first report - - including one made by Sambrook -- repeated the incorrect description. Sumption said that Gilligan had allowed those statements to go uncorrected because they bolstered the authority of his story. `Pretense' ``You kept up the pretense that your source had been a member of the intelligence services because you were happy with it,'' Sumption said ``That is not the case,'' Gilligan replied. The BBC reporter also expressed regret over an e-mail he sent to members of a parliamentary panel that publicly grilled Kelly in the week of his death. The e-mail suggested questions that would increase pressure on Kelly. ``It was quite wrong of me to send it and I apologise,'' Gilligan said. ``I was under an enormous amount of pressure at the time and I really wasn't thinking straight.'' Hutton has heard that one of Gilligan's editors thought his story was ``marred by flawed reporting.'' BBC Director General Greg Dyke on Monday told Hutton that he had regrets over the way the corporation handled the story and called Gilligan's e-mail to the lawmakers ``unacceptable.''. ``It was an improper e-mail to have sent,'' Sambrook said today, adding that no one in the BBC's management was aware that Gilligan had sent the message. Pension `Not at Risk' Kelly, a weapons adviser to the Ministry of Defence, was repeatedly questioned by his employers over his contacts with Gilligan, and newspapers including the Daily Telegraph have said that the scientist had been told he might have lost his government-funded pension as punishment. Not so, Richard Hatfield, the ministry's head of personnel told Hutton's inquiry. ``With no possible interpretation could his pension have been put at risk,'' Hatfield said. More than four months since U.S. President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, the chemical and biological arms British and U.S. leaders said justified the war haven't been found. Hans Blix, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector, today said that before the war, Iraq may have deliberately misled the world by suggesting it had weapons of mass destruction. ``I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991,'' and later tried to give the impression of having illegal arms, Blix told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. |
Re: Yet another twist.
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| Originally posted by Shakka Funny how it always comes back to the media. Sounds more like bad reporting than bad policy to me. |
Re: Re: Yet another twist.
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| Originally posted by Renegade It wasn't the media who reported that Iraq had tried to buy Uranium from Niger. It wasn't the media who copied their war dossier from a college thesis. It wasn't the media who said that Iraq still has an extensive biological and chemical weapons program. It wasn't the media who warned of the grave dangers of leaving Iraq in charge of these "massive stockpiles" of WMDs. It wasn't the media who claimed that the Iraqis were prepared to unleash chemical and biological weapons upon the invading forces. And, despite the conclusions you may have drawn from reading the article, it wasn't the media who claimed that Iraq had WMDs that could be deployed in 45 minutes. All you can say is that the reporter was wrong to say that there was any admission from the Blair government that the intelligence was faulty. The fact that it was faulty at best (deliberately misleading would probably be more accurate) and that we were sent to war on a series of demonstrably false claims seems to have been forgotten by too many people. To blame the media for the obvious shortcomings in the case for war is just to distract attention away from what we already know - Bush, Blair and Howard lied and their pre-emptive doctrine was built on lies. How you came to the conclusion that this is more an example of "bad reporting" than "bad policy" I do not know. |
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