Anatomy of International Murder and the Cover Up of War Crimes

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

What follows is a tale of international intrigue with spies, murder and a conspiracy to cover up the run up to an illegal war by two leaders of government, Tony Blair and George W. Bush.

Conspiracy Theory or War crime? You be the judge.

h/t to emptywheel at FDL

From London Evening Standard

A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead, the Mail on Sunday reported.

   And a 30-year secrecy order has been placed on written records provided to Lord Hutton’s inquiry which were not produced in evidence.

   The Ministry of Justice said decisions on the evidence were a matter for Lord Hutton. But Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who has conducted his own investigations into Dr Kelly’s death, described the order as “astonishing”.

   [snip]

   One of the doctors seeking a full inquest, former assistant coroner Michael Powers, told the Mail on Sunday he had seen a letter from the legal team of Oxfordshire County Council explaining the unusual restrictions placed by Lord Hutton on material relating to his inquiry.

   The letter states: “Lord Hutton made a request for the records provided to the inquiry, not produced in evidence, to be closed for 30 years, and that medical (including post-mortem) reports and photographs be closed for 70 years.”

In case you don’t remember who Dr, David Kelly was there is this synopsis from Larisa Alexandrovna from at-Largely

1. Dr. David Kelly worked for the Ministry of Defense/U.K. as an expert in bio-weapons. He was also one of the key UN weapons inspectors in Iraq.

2. He became concerned about the US/UK claims of WMD in Iraq in the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003. Much the same way that former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson became concerned about US claims of yellowcake uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger. Like Wilson, Dr. Kelly became an anonymous source for a journalist. In Kelly’s case, he met with BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan.

3. The MoD leaked Kelly’s identity (just like Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was leaked) to the press.

4. A Parliamentary committee tasked with investigating the planted intelligence on Iraq asked Kelly to testify, which he did.

5. Several days after his testimony and while preparing for a trip with his wife, Dr. Kelly was found dead in a park nearby his home, which was ruled a suicide. On the day he “committed suicide” he had sent an email to New York Times reporter Judith Miller in which he said “many dark actors playing games.”

6. Leading physicians and first responders who arrived at the park and inspected Kelly’s body did not think he committed suicide, even going so far as to sue the British government to prove their case.

If he committed suicide, why are the records being sealed for 70 years? Possibly because it wasn’t suicide. Suicide has to be proven, it cannot be presumed it MUST be proven. the evidence from the scene indicates that the body may have been dumped

Both saw that the left sleeves of his jacket and shirt had been pulled up to just below the elbow and there was dried blood around his left wrist.

‘There was no gaping wound… there wasn’t a puddle of blood around,‘ said Hunt. ‘There was a little bit of blood on the nettles to the left of his left arm. But there was no real blood on the body of the shirt. The only other bit of blood I saw was on his clothing. It was the size of a 50p piece above the right knee on his trousers.’

Hunt found this very strange. ‘If you manage to cut a wrist and catch an artery you would get a spraying of blood, regardless of whether it’s an accident… Because of the nature of an arterial cut, you get a pumping action. I would certainly expect a lot more blood on his clothing, on his shirt. If you choose to cut your wrists, you don’t worry about getting blood on your clothes.

‘I didn’t see any blood on his right hand… If he used his right hand to cut his wrist, from an arterial wound you would expect some spray.’

Bartlett agreed: ‘I remember saying to one of the policemen it didn’t look like he died from that [the wrist wound] and suggesting he must have taken an overdose or something else.’

Bartlett recalls being called to one attempted suicide where the blood had spurted so high it hit the ceiling. ‘Even in this incident, the victim survived. It was like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the guy walked out alive. We have been to a vast amount of incidents where people who have slashed their wrists, intentionally or not. Most of them are taken down the hospital and given a few stitches then sent straight back home. But there is a lot of blood. It’s all over them.’

The surprise of the paramedics that there was not much blood is supported by a number of medical experts. A letter was written to the papers earlier this year questioning his death.

There were no fingerprints found on the knife and Dr. Kelly was not wearing gloves.

The British paper, The Daily Mail is demanding the truth from former Prime Minister Tony Blair when he appears next week before the Chilcot Inquiry

When Tony Blair finally appears before the Chilcot Inquiry on Friday, there will be many across the land who will be longing to see him at last brought before the bar of public opinion to account for his central role in launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Here is the man who planned it all well in advance, but told Parliament he was trying to avoid war.

The man who told us Saddam Hussein presented an increasing threat, when the Iraqi dictator possessed no weapons of mass destruction at all.

The man who said he put the British interest first, but who, eager and starry-eyed, followed George Bush wherever he wanted to go, even into the maddest corners.

Even the the head, Lord Brian Hutton, of the inquest that allegedly investigated Dr. Kelly’s death was a plant by Blair

Hutton was appointed, and his terms of reference agreed, within record time, just hours after Dr Kelly, the Government’s foremost weapons inspector, was found dead on Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire.

His task was to examine the circumstances surrounding the scientist’s death, including the political events that straddled the war, not least the claim that the Government’s case for war had been ‘sexed up’.

Lord Hutton was the ideal appointment for the Government. He had chaired only one inquiry before – into the diversion of a river in Northern Ireland.

Even more importantly, throughout his career he had shown himself to be sympathetic to the Government and critical of the media.

In 1973, he had represented the Ministry of Defence at the Bloody Sunday inquests. In 1991, he successfully led the campaign to overturn the decision to extradite the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

In 2002, he blocked the attempt by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler to use a public-interest defence to justify his revelations about the actions of the organisation.

Nobody is suggesting that Lord Hutton was anything other than independent but, in the words of Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister, you don’t choose a judge whom you can lean on; you choose one who doesn’t have to be leant on.

Worse, Tony Blair and his close circle decided from the outset that Hutton’s should be a ‘non-statutory inquiry’.

Take away the jargon and what that means is no witness could be compelled to appear, nobody could be required to tell the truth or charged with perjury if they didn’t, and the normal safeguards associated with a court process, such as proper cross-examination of witnesses, were entirely absent.

If Lord Hutton’s conduct of his inquiry into the battle between the Government and the BBC was deeply unsatisfactory, his examination of the death of Dr Kelly was pathetic

and where was tony when Dr. Kelly’s body was discovered? He was on a last minute arranged meeting with co-conspirator GWB in Washington, D.C. From emptywheel

One of the things that happened in one of Ari Fleischer’s last briefings (trying to look for it now) is that he was informed by reporters that Tony Blair would be coming for a visit-Fleischer, apparently, had not been told about what was apparently a last minute trip. Which had the effect of-just days after Plame’s identity was leaked and on the day Kelly was suicided-having Blair and Bush having a last minute visit together.

Just in case he needed to be out of town, you know.

Why aren’t any of these people behind bars? Why is GWB appearing in public service announcements to raise money for Haiti and not in Leavenworth or, better yet, Guantanamo? Oh, right, I forgot, we have to look forward. Bull