As expected, it looks like the only thing "sexed up" about the British government's dossier was the BBC story about it...

[Update on Friday morning]

Via Instapundit, Brendan O'Neill says that Blair's critics were the real spinners. I'd actually be embarrassed to claim that I was "duped" by such a supposedly incompetent government, just as the Dems should be ashamed to be continually outwitted by the retarded monkey in the White House, but I guess when you hunger for power, you have no shame...

So... even though the document was written in such a way that the threat was exagerated and the information presented without the necessary supporting information and, indeed, factual caveats - it wasn't "sexed up".

Actually, if you go back and look at the original BBC claim, before Gilligan went mad in the Daily Mail, his original cliam frankly stands up. It certainly matches what Kelly probably told him.

Gilligan, on the other hand, also sexed up Kelly's role.

However you look at it, you have several claims in the dossier which were presented in such as way that several senior intelligence officers protested (something the Defence Secretary LIED about to parliament) and even led the Chief of Staff at No 10 to conclude that there was, in reality, no threat from Saddam to the UK.

Equally missing were the conclusions of the JIC that any destabalisation of the Iraq government would be more likely to lead to terrorists getting weapons than maintaining the status quo.

So despite all those issues you'd prefer to demonize the BBC eh Rand?

Oh, and this also ignores the minor but significant point that for the first time in decades the sub-committee did NOT reach a unanimous agreement and the Labour chairman had to put through a deciding vote to approve the findings.

Misrepresenting the employment and statements of their one anonymous source, David Kelly, the BBC failed in its attempt to bring down Tony Blair's government -- and failed to acknowledge problems in their reporting, standing by their allegation of intentional fraud long after it, and their reporter Andrew Gilligan, had been discredited. Until recently the poll tax-funded BBC has leaned toward Labour, so they can expect little support from the opposition Tories. Payback is going to be Hell.

As a payer of the "poll tax", regardless of the abysmal journalism Gilligan showed ONCE in a report at 6.07am, the issue the BBC raised is a serious one which has not been adequately addressed.

It certainly matches what Kelly probably told him.

Were you present at the meeting, Dave? You're really grasping here.

Sorry the report let you down, and instead of implicating the government, instead implicated your cherished propaganda organ...

Indeed, "sexed up" is probably not the right term for the British reports. "Plagiarized from a decade-old college thesis" is one term. "Completely outright fabricated" is another term. "Sexed up" is far too mild a inditement. The fact is that the infamous "45 minute claim" was hardly a bit of make-believe icing on an otherwise substantial cake. The entire cake is nothing but hot air.

So: no weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. Also: no Scuds, no nuclear weapons, no centerfuge development, no uranium purchases in Africa, no nuclear program whatsoever, no VX, no Sarin, no Anthrax, no mobile bioweapons labs... so far, not ONE SINGLE CLAIM about Saddam and WMD, in the post-1991 period, which has stood up under scrutiny. Not a single one.

A single falsehood might be called an accident. Several falsehoods might be called sloppiness, or, less charitably, "sexing it up". But an absolute unity of falsehoods... that is something else entirely. "Sexing it up" doesn't cover it by half.

Were you present at the meeting, Dave? You're really grasping here

Just going on what is widely reported and the effect it obviously had, sadly, on the late Dr Kelly.

The same Dr. Kelly who said that Gilligan lied about what he said? As I said, you're grasping.

The same Dr. Kelly who said that Gilligan lied about what he said?

No, the one that admitted under oath that some fo the things he said could have been taken to mean what Gilligan reported, and then, when the news that another reporter actually had tapes of him complaining about Campbell's actions, killed himself.

If you want to ignore this stuff Rand, fine.

BTW. Where's the Kay report these days? That evil Left Wing Rag The Sunday Times suggests that its been shelved due to lack of evidence... What a surprise!

Whatever the U.S. government or the British
government believed it was my own belief
prior to our invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction. I believed
he had biological weapons, chemical weapons,
and possibly a nuclear bomb or two.

During the UN weapons inspections program of
the earlier 90s the world, and we, discovered
that the Hussein administration had spent many
billions developing biological, chemical and
nuclear weapons. Only the nuclear weapons
program had not succeeded, and even in that
case the Ba'athists were estimated to be six
months to a year and half away from having the
bomb.

At the point at which the UN weapons inspectors
were expelled from Iraq, vast numbers of
chemical weapons described in captured iraqi
paperwork were physically unaccounted for and
something similar can be said for the iraqi
biological weapons.

More crucial, even in the event the UN had
accounted for prior Iraqi biological and
chemical weapons, the hard part of biological
and chemical weaponry isn't the making of them
but the knowing how to make them. Biological
and chemical weapons tend to be physically
unstable with time, so at the point at which
the UN inspectors gave up, the unaccounted for
iraqi chemical and biological weapons, manufactured
at the turn of the decade were probably no
longer functional.

But there was nothing to prevent the Ba'athists
from manufacturing new chemical and biological
weapons. And in fact if it wasn't their plan
to do so, why did they give the UN inspectors
such a hard time in the early 90s?

So just knowing this, I thought it likely
Saddam and company had chemical and biological
weapons and were trying to get nuclear, but
the events of late 2002 and early 2003 seemed
to push that "highly likely" to near certainty.

In 2002 it became clear that the Bush administration
was building up forces for a potential invasion,
and largely because of Tony Blair they were persuaded
to seek UN approval.

The UN gave Saddam Hussein an easy out.

All he had to do at that point was cooperate with
UN inspectors, open their weapons production complex
to the world's eyes, destroy on camera any weapons of mass
destruction that existed, get a clean bill of health,
and five years later have as many biological, chemical
and nuclear weapons as desired.

I thought it was basically over except for the details.
And I worried whether this was (a) the Bush administration's
goal, or that (b) Bush and company had been outfoxed.

Instead the Ba'athist regime under threat of invasion
was uncooperative with the new inspection effort and
persuaded everyone of sound mind that they were hiding
much.

Not that this didn't prevent certain governments, like
the French, German, and Russian, in particular, from
backstabbing the US, and claiming that they weren't
obligated by their own words of just two months earlier
to support an invasion, if only verbally, in the event
Iraq did not cooperate.

During the invasion of Iraq I was anticipating, with
a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach, the use
of chemical arms. I was expecting Iraq civilian
deaths in the tens of thousands. Because so much
soviet nuclear material has gone missing in the
last decade I was also knew it was possible a nuclear
bomb could go off, although I was not in fact expecting
it.

The behavior of the Iraqi government seems bizarre
even with hindsight. If they didn't have abc weapons,
why act like they did?

I don't know and in some ways it doesn't matter.

The fact is the belief that the Ba'athists had
weapons of mass destruction was an entirely reasonable
one and one that didn't demand secret evidence nor
the training of an expert in the area, like Dr. Kelly,
to conclude.

(None of this is to imply that Dr. David Kelly didn't
think something similar, the fact is he was an advocate
for the invasion of Iraq -- a point of view and the
reasons for it that the BBC avoided.)

None of this is to imply that Dr. David Kelly didn't think something similar, the fact is he was an advocate for the invasion of Iraq -- a point of view and the reasons for it that the BBC avoided.)

Actually, the BBC have never avoided this point and it had little to do with the original story which was the September dossier was materially changed or "sexed up" at the insistance of Alistair Campbell prior to the delivery to parliament and the world.

That was Kelly's view. Gilligan it seems took Kelly's genuine concerns about the language in the dossier and pushed things further to bring in the Campbell angle. He used unwise language during a 6am broadcast on the BBC and then on the front page of the rabidly anti-Blair newspaper The Sunday Mail (sister to The Daily Mail (a favourite of Rand's)).

Interestingly, however, concerns about the veracity of the data in the dossier were being raised all over Whitehall. By Blair's Chief of Staff, many Intelligence officers and most importantly by Jack Straw the Foreign Secretary who advised Blair *NOT* to send British troops to Iraq.