*Ø* Blogmanac | Lies, damned lies!
The totality is – the Prime Minister lied
By Boris Johnson
The Telegraph, 8 January
"Right. OK then! Now I get it (slap forehead). How could I have been so slow on the uptake? I understood until yesterday that the Prime Minister had been caught out in a great big fat steaming smoking-pants lie. I thought it was clear to the meanest intelligence that Tony Blair had authorised the naming of poor Dr David Kelly to the media, and then pretended otherwise.
"But it turns out that we haven't been paying enough attention to the 'totality' of what he said. No, no, he kept saying yesterday, as he wriggled before Michael Howard like a kebabbed witchetty grub. Only the 'totality' is operative, said Blair, irresistibly recalling the performance of Nixon's spokesman during Watergate. Well, let us indeed examine the totality of the Prime Minister's words and deeds, and discover how we came by this misunderstanding. They total up to quite a lot ...
"In the 48 hours before Dr Kelly's name was released to the media, the Prime Minister chaired four meetings on the business of how to do just that, and those meetings lasted several hours. As Sir Kevin Tebbit, the Permanent Secretary at the MoD, revealed to the Hutton Inquiry, 'a policy decision on that matter had not been taken until the Prime Minister's meeting on Tuesday, July 8.'
"And yet that is a fact that Mr Blair chose to try to conceal. Flying to Hong Kong a few days after Dr Kelly's death, he was asked directly: 'Did you authorise anyone in Downing Street, or the MoD, to release David Kelly's name?' He replied: 'Emphatically not.' He was asked: 'Why did you authorise the naming of David Kelly?' He replied: 'That is completely untrue.'
"Yesterday, in a feat of Clintonian pretzel-words, he told us that, in order to understand this flagrant inconsistency, we had to look at the 'totality' of his words, because he also said that he did not authorise the 'leaking' of the name. So he accepts that he authorised the 'naming', but not the 'leaking'?
"That is a distinction without a difference. He authorised and orchestrated a strategy to put Kelly's name out, and panicked when the lights came on. He was shocked and appalled by the death, and fearful, of course, for his political skin.
"The PM lied, and that is the totality of the matter."
Source
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US calls off search for weapons of mass destruction
Irish Times, 9 January
"The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn a 400-member military team it sent to Baghdad to scour Iraq for evidence of unconventional weapons, write Conor O'Clery in New York & Deaglán de Bréadún in Dublin.
"The move indicates that the US does not now expect to find illegal weapons, the main reason given by President Bush for the war last year that toppled Saddam Hussein.
"At the same time, a prestigious Washington-based research foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has published a scathing report on President Bush's case for war."
Source
Carnegie group says Bush made wrong claims on WMD
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Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda
New York Times, 9 January
"WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no 'smoking gun' proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
"'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,' Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. 'But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.'
"Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted — and something administration officials have done little to discourage." [My emphasis - N]
Source
The totality is – the Prime Minister lied
By Boris Johnson
The Telegraph, 8 January
"Right. OK then! Now I get it (slap forehead). How could I have been so slow on the uptake? I understood until yesterday that the Prime Minister had been caught out in a great big fat steaming smoking-pants lie. I thought it was clear to the meanest intelligence that Tony Blair had authorised the naming of poor Dr David Kelly to the media, and then pretended otherwise.
"But it turns out that we haven't been paying enough attention to the 'totality' of what he said. No, no, he kept saying yesterday, as he wriggled before Michael Howard like a kebabbed witchetty grub. Only the 'totality' is operative, said Blair, irresistibly recalling the performance of Nixon's spokesman during Watergate. Well, let us indeed examine the totality of the Prime Minister's words and deeds, and discover how we came by this misunderstanding. They total up to quite a lot ...
"In the 48 hours before Dr Kelly's name was released to the media, the Prime Minister chaired four meetings on the business of how to do just that, and those meetings lasted several hours. As Sir Kevin Tebbit, the Permanent Secretary at the MoD, revealed to the Hutton Inquiry, 'a policy decision on that matter had not been taken until the Prime Minister's meeting on Tuesday, July 8.'
"And yet that is a fact that Mr Blair chose to try to conceal. Flying to Hong Kong a few days after Dr Kelly's death, he was asked directly: 'Did you authorise anyone in Downing Street, or the MoD, to release David Kelly's name?' He replied: 'Emphatically not.' He was asked: 'Why did you authorise the naming of David Kelly?' He replied: 'That is completely untrue.'
"Yesterday, in a feat of Clintonian pretzel-words, he told us that, in order to understand this flagrant inconsistency, we had to look at the 'totality' of his words, because he also said that he did not authorise the 'leaking' of the name. So he accepts that he authorised the 'naming', but not the 'leaking'?
"That is a distinction without a difference. He authorised and orchestrated a strategy to put Kelly's name out, and panicked when the lights came on. He was shocked and appalled by the death, and fearful, of course, for his political skin.
"The PM lied, and that is the totality of the matter."
Source
US calls off search for weapons of mass destruction
Irish Times, 9 January
"The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn a 400-member military team it sent to Baghdad to scour Iraq for evidence of unconventional weapons, write Conor O'Clery in New York & Deaglán de Bréadún in Dublin.
"The move indicates that the US does not now expect to find illegal weapons, the main reason given by President Bush for the war last year that toppled Saddam Hussein.
"At the same time, a prestigious Washington-based research foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has published a scathing report on President Bush's case for war."
Source
Carnegie group says Bush made wrong claims on WMD
Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda
New York Times, 9 January
"WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no 'smoking gun' proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
"'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,' Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. 'But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.'
"Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted — and something administration officials have done little to discourage." [My emphasis - N]
Source
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