What I cannot (or can I?) understand in the whole Dr Kelly saga, is how those who exposed a spy (a mole, a weasel) in a state administration were wrong, and those who provided him with a cover to continue his underground activities were right?
The facts are as follows:
Dr Kelly was an official of the Defence Ministry with access to sensible and top secret information;
He was not agree with his superiors' policies and decided to blow the whistle;
There is an honest way to do this: you resign from your position and go to press;
He chose to go to press without resigning. It was dishonest;
When exposed as a dishonest person, he appeared to be honest enough to commit suicide.
Of course, one cannot expect something like this from the journos.
Which still leaves unanswered my original question.
It was dishonest to go to the press clandestinely.
It was also a potential security breech.
It seems more likely that it was the press which dishonestly distorted his comments or even wholly contrived some of them to advance an agenda against the government.
It was fully appropriate for the government to release his name because he had committed a breech.
In the matter of his suicide, the government stands innocent for three reasons: Kelly himself had intitiated the events which led to his suicide by breeching his obligation of secrecy. Kelly was sentinent and made his won choice - it is not up to a government to weigh the possibility of suicide in protecting its policies against breeches of faith or hyper sensitivity to journalistic breeches of ethics. Finally, there is a line of press reports that his suicide was not occasioned by this press flap but that its promimate cause was his concern for Iraqis who trusted him who would be compromised in the event of war.
At the end of the day a fair person must say that the government is exonerated from "sexing up" the dossier just as Bush must be relieved of blame for the infamous 16 words. These are the important conclusions being lost in the welter.