Dear Sir,
I’ll keep this short. I was so disappointed with your report of yesterday that I nearly cried. I was with 2 million people on February 15 2003 who marched in London because we all knew that the government was lying. Events have shown they were lying. Governments do lie. They are assisted by your profession’s obsequious axiom that the Government is always above contempt no matter what.
Last November, on President Bush’s visit to London, Richard Perle, one of the main architects of the invasion of Iraq, admitted that “international law stood in the way” of the invasion. In May, the deputy secretary of defence in America, Paul Wolfowitz, admitted that the WMD story was a used as a justification for "bureaucratic reasons”. You must know this. The government intelligence on Iraq was materially unfounded, whatever way it is examined. Somewhere in the chain of information it was falsified. This is a serious matter which has used to cover utterly criminal acts such as bombing of civilians. You know this. You have not demanded that the chain of government information be investigated and sorted out before it gets used to conduct further acts of killing.
You may have honoured your loyalty to your Prime Minister in the way you chose to interpret your terms of reference as narrowly as possible. What good is that? The terms of reference were chosen by the men who are guilty. You had an opportunity, and you seriously let down the people of this country who being humiliated by this aggressive international violence done in our name.
We need an official inquiry into the cases of this invasion -- which are highly contentious. Maybe you did not feel authorized to address any part of it, but you did not even call for further investigation. Only the guilty party, the government, can call for an investigation of itself, and they won’t do it. This is not right. You have dashed our hopes.
So you conclude in your report that if the BBC plays fast and loose with their reporting, and makes an accusation that’s believed by a huge number of the informed population to be true, and events show it to be true, and it leads to the unexpected suicide of one guy, that’s a terrible crime. But if the government plays fast and loose with its secret intelligence, and that intelligence was wholly untrue, and it starts an illegal war killing thousands and humiliating a foreign nation, that’s clear and fine. Is that how it is? The BBC will now become more of a tool of the government than it already is. This is what you want?
The newspapers and satellite channels in this country are totally owned by and serve American corporate interests -- who also fully own the American government -- and they make this plain in their editorial policies. Misinformation on this scale is causing our democracy to fail. Thanks for pushing it further over the edge.
We, the electorate, have been totally disenfranchised on this policy of foreign adventures since both main political parties favour American led violent international criminality and the bombing of people in distant lands who are of no threat to us whatsoever. With a ballot box choice like this, you and the government you serve cannot claim a fair democratic mandate.
This has been a dark day for justice and truth. You have paid your greatest respects to criminal murderers. This is how you conclude your career, whitewashing a British government’s injustices on a scale more serious than anything perpetrated in Northern Ireland. I hope you are proud of your work. We will be fortunate if your retirement saves us from your judgements in future.
Yours,
Julian Todd.
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
An Noyed
29.01.2004 20:18
Rob james
Email Blair
29.01.2004 20:18
Then you can email him from the bottom of the page.
guss
SO WHO THE HELL IS HUTTON?
29.01.2004 20:53
So Who the Hell is Hutton?
By Re-Sista! 28/1/04
Upon his resignation as BBC chairman Gavyn Davies commented on the irreconcilable contradictions between Hutton's "bald conclusions" and the balance of evidence presented to the actual Inquiry.
Even BBC political editor Andrew Marr comments on Huttons underlying assumptions and background, making him more likely to believe and trust certain social groups: "again and again, he comes down on the side of politicians and officials."
So who is Hutton, and what is in his background to come to these extraordinary conclusions? What has lead to the reports extraordinary absolution of Blair's war lies and attack on journalistic freedom?
The 72 year old Baron Hutton of Bresagh, County of Down, North Ireland, is a classic representative of the British ruling establishment. A member of the Anglo-Irish elite, he was educated at Shewsbury all boys boarding school, and then Balliol, Oxford, before entering the exclusive club of the British Judiciary. Whilst British Judges are overwhelmingly conservative, upper class, white, male and biased, Hutton's background is even more compromised.
His name will be familiar to residents of the Six counties of Ulster. During the bloody thrity years war Hutton was an instrument of British state repression, starting in the late 1960's as junior counsel to the Northern Ireland attorney general, and by 1988 rising to the top job of Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
Hutton spent his career as Judge and Jury in the notorious northern Ireland kangaroo 'Diplock Courts'. These were special non-Jury courts, condemned by human rights advocates for their miscarriages of justice. He was hated for this role by the families of the many innocent catholics wrongly convicted here.
Hutton distinguished himself after the Bloody Sunday massacre of civil rights protesters in 1972. He played a key role in the ensuing judicial cover-up called the Widgery Inquiry which absolved British troops of Murder. This miscarriage of justice is only now being investigated by the current Saville inquiry.
Then in 1978 he represnted the British Government before the European Court of Human Rights, defending it against a ruling that it abused and maltreated detainees from the conflict.
However, he will be remembered in the rest of the UK for his role in the 1999 Pinochet affair. Another senior Judge, Lord Hoffman had contributed to the decision to arrest and extradite the notorious former dicator of Chile and mass murderer General Pinochet during his visit to Britain.
As a law lord, Hutton led the rightwing attack on Lord Hoffman, on the excuse that Hoffman's links to the human rights group amnesty international invalidated Pinochets arrest! Lord Hutton said "public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice would be shaken" if Lord Hoffman's ruling was not overturned.
More recently, Hutton was also involved in the ruling that David Shayler, the former MI5 agent, could not argue he was acting in the public interest by revealing secrets.
This history of intimate links with, and knowledge of Britains secret military intelligence operations meant he could be a trusted pair of hands when it came to the Kelly affair.
Copied from the SLP Spark mailing list...
Kai Andersen
Kai Andersen
e-mail:
aokai@tiscali.co.uk
Homepage:
http://groups.msn.com/SocialistLabourPartyLiverpool
fantastic letter
29.01.2004 21:00
What a bleak and depressing world we live in when so much of the mean-hearted owned press is so out of tune with the people - one thing that's a ray of hope - with so many pathological liars in so many key positions those who appoint them like Murdoch - must be running out of evil-hearted sycophants. How perverse that these proffessional liars get rewarded with pay and promotion.
The BBC aint perfect but its the best we've got right now - so these Nazis - how else can you describe them - want to kill it off.
Harold Ferris
e-mail:
hferris@yahoo.co.uk
It's time again
29.01.2004 22:30
pir
Be All, End All?
30.01.2004 15:26
Watch Bliar's behaviour and statements in the days leading up to the report's release, his swaggering responses to opposition questions in Parliament. He knew exactly what to expect.
So this report excuses his lies? So what? Is this the be-all, end-all of the discussion?
Surely, there must be other avenues that can be explored and used to hold the guilty accountable.
How about an Anti-Hutton March?
Any ideas?
Jordan Thornton
e-mail:
dissident420@hotmail.com