Talk:David Kelly (weapons expert)
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Photograph of subject
It is my intention to include a photograph of David Kelly in this article. If there are no objections by tomorrow, I'll put it up. If anyone wishes to object after that time, please discuss changes here instead of directly removing the image. The image I plan to use can be found here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/gallery/2003/12/29/kelly.jpg
Exemplar sententia 14:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
- Who owns the copyright and does Wikipedia have a licence to use it? If so, great. If not, not great. Sam Blacketer 15:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
- The rights belong to the UK Guardian Newspaper. I had emailed them yesterday (perhaps somewhat optimistically), under the impression that i would have a reply today, but as it is i cannot put it up. If anyone can find an open license picture of Kelly, could they provide a link here so that we can decide whether its worth waiting for a reply from the Guardian?
- To update, i have received a reply from the Editor in Chief of the Guardian newspaper, their production staff has traced it to the website "Getty", to whom i will now be sending another letter.
- Turns out Getty is contractually prohibited to provide an open license for their images. I have found another image to use (http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/cgi-bin/vuImag4.pl?i=198), which appears to have a "non-profit educational" usage allowance, but i have emailed the staff just in case.
The last edit says that Kelly's name was leaked to the press by the MoD. has this been established or is it still in doubt as to whether it was leaked by the MoD or the BBC? Mintguy 18:04 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
His name was supplied by the Secretary of Defence in a private letter to the BBC. The BBC refused to comment (and journalistic protection of sources is such that a source's name is not revealed). Kelly, having been a media source before was an obvious potential source. The media asked the MoD was it him. Instead of saying 'no comment' Hoon's press officer confirmed that it was their conviction that he was and that he had been named in the letter to the BBC. FearÉIREANN 18:52 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I was aware of the Geoff Hoon letter, I wasn't aware of the way Kelly's name was revealed to the broader press. I've changed 'leaked' (which sounds intentional) to revealed. Mintguy 18:59 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I am still puzzled by this whole affair. The BBC continues to refer to Dr Kelly's "apparent suicide". I thought that there had been an inquest, and to the best of my knowledge, this is not a possible outcome in England and Wales. The inquest has been completed, has it not? Also, the report that Kelly took a large dose of coproximol before his death has not received too much attention lately. Coproximol is a drug which would require a prescription, so unless he or a family member had a need for it, it would not be so easy to obtain legally. Of course anything is obtainable if one is determined. The Hutton enquiry could be a smoke screen perhaps. I, like many others, just do not know what to think of this. -- David Martland 08:50, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- I believe the inquest into Kelly's death was opened and heard some details of the circumstances, but it was adjourned until after the public inquiry. Mintguy
- The Coroner's inquest is still ongoing. It was opened and adjourned on the 21 July 2003 . It was again opened an adjourned on the 25 July to hear the preliminary toxicology results. It was yet again reopened and adjourned 14 August. So it still an apparent suicide. -- Popsracer 21:43, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- I believe Hutton has officially superseded the coroner, under a rarely invoked law that allows a judicial inquiry to "serve the purpose of" an inquest. Martin 23:14, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
OK - that explains things. There hasn't actually been an outcome of the inquest yet. Thanks for this. -- David Martland 22:28, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The power of the Lord Chancellor to direct that a judicial inquiry takes the place of an inquest is contained in the Access to Justice Act 1999, s. 71. Including the remarks of Dr. Hunt does not really further the case of the conspiracy theorists: his comment is somewhat ambiguous, but the only interpretation in which it assists a conspiracy theory is one in which he is commenting on the areas away from his professional expertise. Dbiv 21:45, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks for correcting the legal issue. However I think it's a pity that you removed the comments of Dr Hunt. Although in some sense he was commenting outside his area of specific expertise as a pathologist, at the same time he cannot be considered a layperson in the investigation into the cause of a person's death. In addition he was one of the first persons to investigate the scene of the death and therefore his remarks are highly relevant. If you wish to ensure neutral point of view, then it would be better to state one of the strongest arguments against what you (and the article) label as a conspiracy theorist rather than by simply removing information.
- Incidentally I think the use of the term 'conspiracy theory' is a cliché and itself lacks neutral point of view. The term is used to label theories that are considered false according to a reduced standard of proof, probably because the existence of paranoid individuals who create preposterous theories is part of popular culture. However I expect we agree that facts and their interpretation should be based judicious use of reason rather than miscellaneous associations.--Mervynl 17:32, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I certainly agree on 'conspiracy theory'. I don't think what we have here is a conspiracy theory in the true sense as it's merely the raising of doubts without any overall theory as to who was actually responsible. Perhaps the section ought to be titled Alternative explanations. However, I still don't think Dr Hunt adds anything. He doesn't explain exactly what he means, and the three Doctors' letter implies he either made a mistake or falsified the post mortem examination (some of the conspiracy websites fairly openly accuse him of being implicated himself). How about expanding the details of the doctors' claims - say, by stating their opinions about the amount of co-proxamol found in the body etc.? Dbiv 23:12, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I think your latest edits take care of it well. Thanks. --Mervynl 10:48, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Links
David, thanks for adding the Hutton link. I restored the BBC link so that we now have both, as I wanted a source that confirmed he was replying to the e-mails as he sat at his desk that morning, and that an e-mail he had received referred to "dark forces." The BBC article confirms both of these points. No harm in having both there. SlimVirgin (talk) 08:46, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
- I tend to prefer primary to secondary sources because secondary sources often have their own interpretation and it ought really to be left to the reader, but in this case the Hutton Inquiry censored the name of the recipient so the BBC News article supplies important concept. However I don't like giving David Kelly-related stories links to BBC articles because they were heavily caught up in the whole story and so they have an interest in how it is interpreted. It's a pity Dr Kelly was never able to explain this mysterious remark. Dbiv 10:46, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Why the Downing Street memo relevant
The Downing Street Memo could just be the tip of the iceberg of how determined Bush's administration was to invade Iraq.
In July 2002 the DSM summarized conversations between the heads of British and American Intelligence. It explicitly stated that “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
The DSM indicates more than that Bush and Blair were lying through their teeth when they said “We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.”
In hindsight, the following two examples clearly illustrate how “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invading Iraq.
(1) In his State of the Union Address, Bush misleadingly demonized Saddam as a man who gassed thousands of Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war. The press sensationalized this story even though the CIA had long since concluded that both Iran and Iraq gassed each other in the battle for Halabja, and that the dead Kurds' bodies indicated they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas - which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.
Stephen Pelletiere, the CIA’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war detailed the Halabja gas incident in The New York Times on Jan. 31, 2003 http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-08.htm , but it was largely ignored in the pre-war hysteria.
(2) Bush also used his State of the Union Address to scare Americans into believing that Saddam had acquired yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Bush blatantly presented his Niger “Yellowcake” document to the UN, allegedly proving that Saddam was secretly buying uranium. Bush’s Yellowcake document turned out to be so badly forged, however, that it took the IAEA took only 24 hours to announce it was fake. http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Transcripts/2004/cnn21032004.html
Whether Bush’s team knew they were using a fake document is debatable, but it begs the question of how they obtained such a document without forging it themselves.
It is very clear, that Bush ignored the fact that the CIA had sent Joseph Wilson to Africa to investigate the yellowcake charges, and that Wilson determined the allegations had little foundation. Instead of Bush’s administration being relieved that Iraq most probably hadn’t bought yellowcake in Niger, Wilson’s wife was brutally threatened by Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, and Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.
As part of a smear campaign, Libby and Rove told the press (Judith Miller) that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA agent. This clearly had nothing to do with Wilson’s credibility, but only served as a brutal threat to anyone wishing to share contradictory evidence on Iraq’s WMDs. Undaunted, Wilson later publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq.
These two examples (among several others) confirm that Bush’s administration was willing to fabricate information to scare American’s into invading Iraq. The second example also shows how Karl Rove and Lewis Libby were willing to indirectly threaten the life of Valerie Plame to prevent Joseph Wilson from providing America with good intelligence on Iraq’s (non-existent) WMDs.
What other crimes did the neo-con cabal commit? It’s unlikely that the Plame leak was the beginning and the end of their crimes. Why was the Bush administration so uncooperative during the Plame Investigation? Why was the Bush administration so uncooperative during the 9-11 Commission Investigation? What are they trying to hide? Were Bush and Cheney just Lewis Libby and Karl Rove’s flunkies through the whole scandal or were they more complicit?
Is the neo-con cabal continuing to fabricate evidence to support the invasions of other oil-rich countries like Iran and Venezuela (Note Bush’s claim of Hugo Chavez rigging the election in Venezuela even though Jimmy Carter supervised the event and claimed that it was far more transparent, honest and fair than the USA’s federal election in the State of Florida. The intrigue in Syria is also surprising considering that all Hariri’s assassination accomplished was to speed Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon.)
Fabricating evidence to support the invasion of Iraq might go to a whole new level, however, when you consider the Anthrax scare.
Pundits loudly announced that the only people who had anthrax were the USA, Russia and Iraq, and then hysterically demanded to know why Americans weren’t connecting the dots. Unfortunately there are a few more dots to take into consideration.
ANTHRAX MYSTERY?
Is it surprising that the CIA and FBI haven’t exposed the anthrax killers? Are the anthrax killers near the top of the FBI’s most wanted list? We do know this about the anthrax murders:
1. The letters contained highly classified weaponized anthrax (Ames Iowa strain, weaponized at Fort Detrick Maryland) developed by the U.S. military and/or the CIA.
2. The letters were mailed from Trenton New Jersey while the Republicans were trying to jam through the Patriot Act that would give President Bush unprecedented power to disregard Americans’ civil rights, increase defense spending, control the media and wage war.
3. Anthrax letters were mailed to:
a) Tom Brokaw of NBC Nightly News (A fairly balanced news network)
b) The New York Post. (A high profile, fairly balanced newspaper)
c) A boy died of anthrax after visiting ABC news (A fairly balanced U.S. news agency)
d) A editor for the National Enquirer died of anthrax (A very widely distributed and widely hated tabloid that is prone to sensationalize conspiracy theories)
e) A mailroom worker contracted anthrax at CBS News (A fairly balanced U.S. news agency)
The media was driven into hysteria from the Anthrax letters and fervently backed the war on Terror. Note that anthrax letters were not sent to war loving media giants FOX or CNN.
f) Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (Democrat, S.D.) received the first Senate anthrax letter as he led the opposition to the original version of the Patriot Act.
g) Senator Patrick Leahy (Democrat, Vt.) received an anthrax letter after he expressed reservations about the Patriot Act. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he managed the debate on the Bill.
4. No Republicans received anthrax letters. George Bush Sr and Collin Powell didn’t receive anthrax letters. No CIA agents, Military Personnel, Weapons Dealers, Oil Companies or Jewish Organizations receive anthrax letters. No large public gatherings were targeted with anthrax. (This all lends serious doubt that either Arab militants or Saddam Hussein were behind the letters)
5. The Letters contained scribbled words “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great” that were written by someone worried that his handwriting could be traced. Tom Brokaw, Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy and the NY Post have no obvious connection to Israel. The anthrax letters, instead, looked like they might have been forged to frame Islamic militants. After receiving his anthrax letter, Senator Daschle switched from supporting a 2 year limit on the Patriot Act, later defending a 4-year sunset clause as the appropriate balance.
6. The letters were precisely targeted and perfectly timed to unite the media and the opposition (Democrats) in the War on Terror, the War on Afghanistan and the War on Iraq.
7. The letters (only 4 were positively identified) did not kill their intended targets, but the anthrax material was so sophisticated that the spores passed through the envelopes and infected people all along their path--including secretaries and postal workers. Five people are known to have died from inhaling spores from these letters, and 13 others were infected but survived.
8. The Anthrax Letters created the maximum amount of terror with the minimum loss of life.
9. Dozens of hoax anthrax threats have been widely publicized in the media. The CIA and Bush administration have promoted some of these hoax threats – encouraging many American to buy gas masks and seal off their houses with duct tape. Faulty (read: fabricated) CIA “intelligence” about Iraqi Anthrax built hysterical U.S. support for an invasion despite serious doubts from Americans, Brits and most of their closest allies. Hoax anthrax scares are still creating front page headlines and extreme terror throughout North America.
10. The day after the anthrax letters were mailed to Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy (6 days before either Senator received the letters), the original batch of Ames strain anthrax was destroyed with the permission of the FBI --- making tracing this anthrax type much more difficult. Could it be incompetence, conspiracy or cover up that, two months after the anthrax attacks started, the FBI still had not investigated the only facility capable of producing weaponized anthrax -- the biological warfare program based at Fort Detrick Maryland.
11. Within a ten day period, immediately after the USA Patriot Act was passed, three top anthrax experts with knowledge of the U.S. bioweapons program died under suspicious circumstances. Within four months 8 more world-leading microbiologists were killed. Coincidentally, the controversial coroner of one microbiologist (Don Wiley) was later found wrapped in barbed wire with a live bomb strapped to his chest.
12. British microbiologist, weapons expert and would-be whistle blower David Kelly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly) died in an “alleged suicide” on July 17, 2003 – amidst world wide publicity that the U.S. and Britain had invaded Iraq largely based on fabricated “intelligence”. Half the world was anxiously waiting for further news releases on Kelly just before his mysterious death. It is notable that on the morning of his death, Kelly e-mailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller (of Valery Plame leak and Lewis Libby Indictment fame) and told her that many dark actors were playing games. (Email sent by Dr Kelly to Judith Miller on July 17, 2003) Were some of these dead microbiologists capable of exposing the anthrax killers? Had they been e-mailing each other about the attacks? This stuff has got all the makings of a detective thriller other than creating any serious doubts as to who was responsible for the letters. The only thing that really has to be established is a motive.
(A) Did the perpetrators mail the letters because they honestly believed that the American people needed to be shaken up – even after 9/11 – in order to face the threat of suicide bombers?
(B) Did the perpetrators mail the letters to cash in on hysterical support for:
a. Increased Weapons Spending? Hundreds of billions of dollars are going into somebody’s pockets.
b. An Invasion of Afghanistan with its strategic presence along the east border of Iran, and the oil-rich Caspian Sea?
c. An Invasion of Iraq (on allegations of stockpiling anthrax and other WMDs) with its strategic presence along the west border of Iran.
d. An invasion of Iran with current (delayed) allegations of its complicity in 9-11 and the terrorist attacks?
e. Complete control of the oil-rich Middle East?
f. Note that Shell Oil is paying $150 million in fines to the SEC and FSA for overstating its reserves by (at least) 20%. Shell’s auditors warned the company as early as January 2000 that its reserves were overstated. Could other oil companies also have been overstating their reserves and pressuring the U.S. and British governments for access to oil in Iraq, the Caspian Sea, Iran, (and Venezuela)?
(C) Did the perpetrators mail the letters because they wanted to create a massive distraction from the financial meltdown on Wall Street that was being caused by widespread exposure of corporate corruption (ENRON, WorldCom, Merck, Arthur Anderson, Halliburton etc. etc. etc.)?
The people who profit the most from a crime are the people most likely to have committed it. Who profited the most from the Anthrax letters?
I really hope that the answer to the above multiple choice question is (A) but it makes you want to get some straight facts from the people Americans are trusting with their lives.
It would be better than Santa Clause if there was a believable: (D) None of the above; answer
Who else has a clear, believable motive to precisely target the media and the opposition with anthrax?
Remember how Karl Rove and Lewis Libby were willing to pre-emptively threaten the life of Valerie Plame (by leaking her identity to the press) to prevent Joseph Wilson from providing America with good intelligence on Iraq’s (non-existent) WMDs? Remember how Bush was willing to use the forged “Yellowcake” document? How much of a stretch is it to assume that one or two members of Bush’s administration were willing to brutally threaten the media and the main senate opponents to the Iraq war????
Remember that some of the people that were so desperate to invade Iraq were among the few people in the world capable of accessing the weaponized anthrax from Fort Detrick.
It's chilling that it might only take a few hundred people, a few billion dollars, some orchestrated scare tactics and a lot of greed to completely hijack a government with an annual budget of a trillion dollars.
Even with all the inconsistencies surrounding 9/11, Bush's team figures that it's in their best self-interest not to co-operate with investigations. What are they trying to hide? Are people just too apathetic or dumb to need to know what's going on in the world?
Like Bush said, terrorists have to be brought to justice—no matter who they are.
It would be best if the whole Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfwitz, John Ashcroft, John Bolton, Trent Lott, Richard Perle etc) was put on polygraphs to see if they know of any conspiracies around the WTC bombings, Anthrax letters or Iraq invasion.
For consistency, other Washington insiders like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, John Kerry etc should also be put on lie detectors.
It’s laughable that lowly police officers and CIA agents are rigorously tested with polygraphs, but the directors appointed to control the agencies are considered “untouchable”, “beyond suspicion” and “above the law”– even during global debacles like 9/11, the War on Terror and the War on Iraq.
- David, 'm inclined to agree with User:202.37.96.11. First, the date: that the memo was written in July 2002 doesn't tell us anything about whether Kelly may or may not have been referring to the same type of distortions (if there were any) in September 2002. Second, the U.S./UK distinction: it's true that the memo discusses what the Americans were doing. But there are no expressions of disapproval, and the Americans seemed quite happy to let the Brits in on it. Most importantly, British intelligence and U.S. intelligence on Saddam ended up being entirely consistent, and yet the Americans seem to have admitted, and the Brits accepted, that U.S. intelligence was being fixed around policy. Yet British intelligence (not fixed around policy, for the sake of argument) ended up with the same thrust, which is remarkable, and which means the Americans needn't have bothered fixing anything.
- You're right that the above is speculative, but no one's suggesting we write it in the article. It's just an argument in favor of including the link, which is, as I said earlier, arguably relevant. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:26, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
Another sterile argument. Kelly said that the dossier was "sexed up". Kelly was castigated for the suggestion. It has been since shown to be substantiated to some degree. By the memo. So the memo is interesting in the context of Kelly, even if you think it proves nothing. It doesn't precisely say "and we will fix our facts accordingly" but it's suggestive. Grace Note 06:44, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I think you may be confusing David Kelly with his interrogator Andrew Gilligan. What Kelly said may not have been exactly what Gilligan reported. By all accounts Kelly's remarks concerned solely the drafting of the September dossier and while Kelly's account was basically correct from his perspective, the story as reported by Andrew Gilligan was substantially incorrect. It certainly has not been substantiated - in fact it has been disproved by the evidence submitted to the Hutton Inquiry.
- There seems to be a general assumption that David Kelly was some sort of anti-war campaigner. He wasn't. His primary motivation in speaking to Gilligan appears to have been dislike of interference in his work as an expert, not lack of support for government policy. David | Talk 09:03, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Nobel Peace Prize
- Kelly's work as a member of the UNSCOM team led him to visit Iraq 37 times, and his success in uncovering Iraq's biological weapons program caused Rolf Ekéus to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Being nominated for the Peace Prize is an honor, but it is not official and not necessarily prestigious. Any national legislator or about a third of the university professors in the world can make a nomination, and there have been as many as 140 some years. Nominators are requested to keep their nominations secret, so it's only those wishing publicity who make announcements. Altogether, I see no reason to keep it. No offense to the subject, this is a general Nobel Peace Prize "nominees" issue. -Willmcw 08:05, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
- On reflection, since Kelly had a named, prominent nominator I think this meets a higher standard than most "Nobel Peace Prize" nominees. I'm not going to remove it. -Willmcw June 29, 2005 09:43 (UTC)
Bahai? of cours bahais are allowed to work with goverment organisations. they just don't have to work in ore with political partys
David Naccoche and his 'decrypts'
I've just removed this paragraph as Original Research. David Naccoche has indeed developed a system for trying to make educated guesses at the content of blacked out portions of documents and if you look at page 711 of the linked PDF (warning, 38.9 megabyte download) you'll see that he's run it on Hutton Inquiry exhibit CAB/11/0077. However it's far from clear what was found: the sentence "We are now doing a note now giving the detail on Iraq and AQ" is in the clear. The rest is only partially found: "it is becoming XXXXX are some XXXXXX although there is nothing XXXXXXXXXXXXX". Naccoche, however, does not make any conclusion on what the full sentence read. David | Talk 22:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
POV claims
"Kelly believed Iraq had retained biological weapons after the end of inspections. He was privately supportive of moves to invade Iraq and remove the government of Saddam Hussein, and made the case to friends and family when they discussed it with him. After the end of the ground war, he was invited to join the inspection team trying to find any trace of weapons of mass destruction programmes, and was apparently enthusiastic about resuming his work there." Can someone add some sources for this claim. It seems like a specualtion and POV to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.108.250.170 (talk • contribs)
- You want sources? I got sources.
- Kelly's belief that Iraq had retained biological weapons has multiple sources. Perhaps the best is the evidence of Susan Watts to the Hutton Inquiry, on page 174: "Q. What was your understanding of Dr Kelly's views about the prospects of finding weapons of mass destruction, he thought that they were there but they were well hidden? A. My impression is that he felt very definitely thought that there were weapons programmes. That if there were to be any evidence of those, it might well be a lengthy search to find that evidence and it would be a process of pulling together many, many bits of information and that that process is really only beginning."
- Kelly's support for the war was testified by his wife to the Hutton Inquiry on September 1, 2003, at page 8: "He had some trepidation though about the war coming up. He believed in it but was obviously sad that we seemed to be moving towards that position." (my emphasis)
- That Kelly made the case to others for the war is testified by his sister on pages 93-94 op cit:
- "Certainly I myself, and my husband, and I know from conversations my younger brother, we were not convinced of the need for war now. We could not understand: why now? Why not last year? Why not next year? Why now? And in discussions that we have had since my brother died we have realised that each of us changed our minds before the war itself actually happened and that we attributed our change in mind to individual conversations that we had with my brother. I actually thought he would agree with me that there was no new indication for war. I knew that he felt that the sanctions had hurt the Iraqi people very hard but had not made that much difference to Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, and I was very surprised when he was absolutely and utterly convinced that there was almost certainly no solution, other than a regime change, which was unlikely to happen peacefully, and regrettably would require military action to enforce it. He explained it in detail that I probably did not understand at the time, in a very convincing way, and made me realise that the war was not only inevitable but that it was entirely justified in the light of what the Iraqi regime could produce in the future." (my emphasis)
- Will this do? David | Talk 12:33, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Killed by Baathists
Have added this speculation to alternative theories, as far as i know only one considered by the Hutton Inquiry. BillMasen 00:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Statement of his religion?
Why is his religion entered here? Is this common practice in wikipedia? Not wanting to be a "PC Thug", I nonetheless believe that it should be discussed whether a significant person's, one who is in the Wiki database, religion should be outlined as it is in this article; at the very top. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.69.14.90 (talk) 09:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC).
- It is commonplace in American biographies of people in public life to find religion listed. In the UK it's only done in cases where the religion is relevant or notable. In Dr Kelly's case, his conversion to the Baha'i faith was remarked upon, and some people have seen it as relevant in the light of Baha'i teachings against lying and against suicide. Personally I think it should be kept in. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 00:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Death of Doctor
A civil servant leaks to the press, gets caught, is put under pressure and kills himself out of shame.
There you go. No need for all the conspiracy nonsense spouted above.
- Wow. Amazing. Who needs officially initiated inquiries, nay, entire systems of justice, when we have people with such insightful clarity of judgement as yourself.
- Well, given that all official enquiries into this matter, yes - backed by an entire system of justice and scrutinised by extensive public inquiry and the repeated investigations of an anti-war press - came to roughly this conclusion, you need not be so amazed... and thanks for the compliment but my clarity of judgement was never in any doubt. Theories about Kelly being murdered by the British Secret Services on the personal orders of Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell may be the kind of nonsense that Channel 4 News, the Guardian and the Independent thrive on, but unfortunately here at Wiki we need to stay on this planet and stick to the facts, less exciting though they may be. And if you do insist on making smarmy, sarcastic comments on anyone elses contributions here, may I suggest that you start with Mr Anthrax Obsession and the other members of the "Dick Cheney and the CIA Did It" brigade (above) on this page?
- BTW, Quick memo to all Civil Servants - please read documents carefully before you sign them (e.g. job contracts, Official Secrets Acts etc), and don't talk to dodgy, unreliable, over-ambitious journalists who may then twist your words and lie to sell a story. Most of all, don't get involved with the BBC, which has been exposed (in July 2007) as an organisation where editorial manipulation, bias, falsification and cheating have become par for the course. It'd be enough to drive anyone to suicide.
____________________
- I do believe you missed my point. At no juncture did I mention that your judgement itself was wrong, and this is why: I don't know what happened to David Kelly on the afternoon of July 17. More pointedly, however, nor do you, no matter how clear everything may seem. Now since this IS a discussion page, you are invited to take on a slightly more opinionated conjecture upon the subject matter within the article, and there is sweet-damn-all for which you need to restrict yourself in this regard.
- However, David Kelly is ultimately a human being, one by whom - at least before the 'incident' - a substantial amount of respect was commanded for his work. I'm sure you must agree that there is an obligation upon the general public to, in the very least, explore fully the events surrounding his death so as to ascertain full curtainty of his plight; something that no one has yet achieved.
- So yes, fellow wikipedian, I do believe I shall go right on making smarmy, sarcastic remarks to anyone who's balloon of righteousness is so bloated that it pours in to even my line of sight, not to mention so that it obscures their own.
- Calm down. It's only an encyclopedia.
- Calmer than cucumber, dear fellow. Albeit a particularly disgruntled cucumber.
- A disgruntled cucumber? How did such a mental image get intertwined with the sad death of Doctor "I Only Tells It Like It Is" Kelly? I take it, you are, in some way, reaching out to Shakespeare: “My salad days, When I was green in judgment”. Ah, green in judgement indeed...
- - Or is it that perhaps even the most green of cucumbers possess a greater facility for judgement than specific others?
- I think we're almost straying into gherkin territory here...
- - Or is it that perhaps even the most green of cucumbers possess a greater facility for judgement than specific others?