Below we post a selection of recent letters on “Britain: Hutton inquiry whitewashes Blair government over Iraq war”
Dear Editor,
As expected the Hutton Inquiry has produced a complete whitewash.
The most revealing item in all the coverage on TV so far has been an interview on “BBC Breakfast News” on Thursday morning, January 29, with two members of the public who attended the actual inquiry and heard all the evidence. Both confessed to being “stunned” and “disappointed” at Lord Hutton’s report. They said it was as if Hutton had been attending a totally different inquiry, hearing different evidence.
Like millions of us they both felt the government had “sexed up” the infamous dossier to justify the war on Iraq. One of them pointedly referred to the way Hutton had casually dismissed the evidence of senior intelligence officers who has expressed misgivings about the value of the 45-minute claim.
Now we have listened to gloating of Blair and Campbell, as a well as all the drivel about how the BBC needs to tighten up its act.
Hopefully one day these liars and criminals will be brought to book.
Yours fraternally,
DB
29 January 2004
* * *Blair and his fascist clique have accomplished what they wanted. BBC has been declared for the whole world to hear that it is a totally inefficient news organization, reducing its privatizing value for sale to junk for the buyer.
Who is the buyer going to be? The only person in the world whose news can be what the devious governments in the world want it to be—Sr. billionaire Rupert Murdoch.
FR
29 January 2004
* * *So can we now read the version that would have gone out had the inquiry found against the Government?
DM
29 January 2004
* * *Excellent article! Thoughtful, intelligent, analytical, cogent... THANKS!
CL
29 January 2004
* * *I am appalled but not surprised at Lord Hutton’s conclusions that in Dr. Kelly’s death and the false claims made about Iraq’s WMD only the BBC was to blame for telling the truth. For him, an appointee of the accused, Blair and his Government did nothing wrong in promoting a totally unjustified (WMD are nowhere to be found), illegal and predatory war against Iraq (this central question is “not within my terms of reference”, he writes in his report) which continues to devastate the country’s infrastructure and the livelihood of its people, whilst scores of Iraqis and young coalition soldiers including British ones are dying every day and the cronies of President Bush are reaping billions in cozy tenders.
Everybody knows now that UN inspectors were right in saying all along that Saddam Hussein (a third world thug yes but no Hitler) no longer had any WMD (in view of the criminal and genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq for 12 years) and threatened no one except his own people.
Lord Hutton’s “findings” confirm once again, after the Lloyd’s and Maxwell financial scandals which produced thousands of victims and scores of suicides but no indictments for fraud, false accounting etc... that British Justice once a model for the world is no longer what it used to be. It is increasingly seen for what it often is regretfully: chosen/conditioned by those in power to be strong with the weak and weak with the strong and a tool of Government used and occasionally abused by cynical members of the Establishment to advance their self serving agendas on behalf of a corrupt and greedy so called Elite.
AY
29 January 2004