Posted on 07/10/2004 1:49:22 AM PDT by thoughtomator
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
-------- snip! ----------
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
LOL!
Were these quotes in Gilligans' reports 'in character' for Kelly? From what I've read, it doesn't appear to be so, but I may be wrong. Did Kelly join leftwing groups like Ritter did against the war? I don't know if he did but no one's ever mentioned it. He's been pretty harsh on Iraq from what I've read.
A snippet from "BIOWEAPONS: British Expert Leaves Impressive Arms Control Legacy," Richard Stone, Science Magazine
Kelly, a microbiologist by training and a senior adviser to the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat of the U.K.'s Ministry of Defence, was widely respected for his expertise and his courteous, but forceful, dealings with adversaries bent on hiding illicit bioweapons activities. As one of the chief weapons inspectors in Iraq, Kelly made one of the biggest discoveries of his life. In the early 1990s, searching for evidence of an offensive bioweapons effort in Iraq, Kelly and U.S. colleague Richard Spertzel noticed something suspicious: A few years earlier, Iraq had gone on a buying spree, importing 39 tons of bacterial growth media. Officials produced documents claiming that the agar was for hospitals to diagnose infections. But when the inspectors compared Iraqi imports with those into neighboring countries Iran and Syria, figuring they should be similar, "it was clear that Iraq's imports were way too high," Kelly said in an interview with Science shortly before his death.
In addition, the agar's bulk packaging did not correspond with its intended use. The inspectors accused Iraqi officials of forging the documents and importing the agar for the production of anthrax and other strains, forcing them in 1995 to acknowledge for the first time that Iraq had pursued a clandestine offensive bioweapons program....Kelly also was a key player in efforts in the early 1990s to ferret out the extent of the Soviet Union's offensive bioweapons efforts. After key details of the program emerged from two defectors in the dying days of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and a grudging Russia signed a trilateral agreement in 1992 that called for inspections at facilities suspected of being engaged in recent bioweapons activities. The initiative unraveled in the mid-1990s due to Russia's reluctance to come clean on its past activities and refusal to permit inspections of military labs. Kelly, the only expert to have taken part in all the trilateral site visits, had warned recently that Russia has yet to demonstrate convincingly that it has abandoned its offensive bioweapons program.
Say, if we managed to link the anthrax in the October 2001 attacks on the US to Iraq and/or Russia, don't you think it would be obvious that the Russians hadn't abandoned their offensive bioweapons program?
How much would it be worth to keep that hid?
IIRC, Kelly supported the war. He also made almost the exact opposite statements in his other interview with a different reporter then Gilligan quoted him making.
Kelly's beef, supposedly, with the British document was merely how quickly Hussein could prepare his WMDs for use - not whether he had them, was a long term threat, or needed to go.
He wasn't murdered, he apparently had a conscious and/or fear of other repercussions so killed himself after he was exposed as doing something (speaking against the government to these reporters) when he shouldn't have, then giving misleading testimony before the hearing.
The quote that Kelly tried like hell to avoid conceding he'd said:
Q23 Mr Chidgey: Thank you. I would just like to read out to you a statement in the notes that were made: "In the run-up to the dossier the Government was obsessed with finding intelligence to justify an immediate Iraqi threat. While we were agreed on the potential Iraqi threat in the future there was less agreement about the threat the Iraqis posed at the moment. That was the real concern, not so much what they had now but what they would have in the future, but that unfortunately was not expressed strongly in the dossier because that takes the case away for war to a certain extent". Finally, "The 45 minutes was a statement that was made and it got out of all proportion. They were desperate for information. They were pushing hard for information that could be released. That was one that popped up and it was seized on and it is unfortunate that it was. That is why there is an argument between the intelligence services and Number 10, because they had picked up on it and once they had picked up on it you cannot pull back from it, so many people will say 'Well, we are not sure about that' because the word smithing is actually quite important." I understand from Miss Watts that is the record of a meeting that you had with her. Do you still agree with those comments?
~snip~
I don't see any contradiction between the Kelly you cite (and with which I am familiar, having researched this) and the Kelly that spoke with Gilligan, Watts and other reporters.
The reason this is on point for this thread is I contend there was a coordinated effort to bring down Blair and Bush with charges of lying about intelligence. That some people were useful fools and manipulated to this end is no surprise.
Interesting stuff, eh?
Bump for the truth.
The liars get all the publicity and it's long past time,that their lies get trounced with the truth and facts.
A lot!
Ping
In a very very limited way. He certainly agreed Saddam posed a threat. His own words:
'Only regime change will avert the threat'
excerpt:
War may now be inevitable. The proportionality and intensity of the conflict will depend on whether regime change or disarmament is the true objective. The US, and whoever willingly assists it, should ensure that the force, strength and strategy used is appropriate to the modest threat that Iraq now poses.
~snip~
He also made almost the exact opposite statements in his other interview with a different reporter then Gilligan quoted him making.
Link and context, please?
Also remember that these conversations with Gilligan, Watts and others occurred after the war--May or June. We don't know what pressures may have been brought to bear, but Kelly most certainly spoke to these reporters and he was not authorized to do so by his own admission.
Sorry, no link at hand.
Shortly after the "Blair Lied Look Gilligan Says So" story broke another reporter came forward with her interview of Kelly which was dramatically at odds with Gilligan's.
I see you aren't impressed with Kelly's obfuscation before the hearing about his interaction with Watts. I posted it back a bit.
That's odd because Susan Watts said there was a contradiction.
BTW, you two need to read the notes of Susan Watts that I've posted twice. Kelly told her what he told Gilligan.
I posted it at #243 and #264.
When and where did she say that? Gilligan embellished, but what is at issue is what Kelly told them both, and on that they both agree.
Demorats are incapable of telling the truth. The best way to discern the truth when a Demorat speaks is to believe the opposite of what they are saying.
There is no doubt there is a coordinated effort to bring down Bush and Blair. Or for that matter, the underreported effort to bring down the Aussie leader, too.
excerpt:
Gilligan took notes using a palmtop computer. Two versions of the notes were found, only one of which mentioned Alastair Campbell.
However, Gilligan's account of the conversation was substantially corroborated by independent interviews given to other BBC journalists, Susan Watts and Gavin Hewitt. Watts had recorded her conversation with Kelly, in which Kelly did indeed say that Alastair Campbell was responsible for changes to the dossier. (As both Gilligan and Watts had spoken to Dr. Kelly on an unattributable basis, he could expect his anonymity to be protected)
Good point on Howard.
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