:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 9.24.2003 ::

:: The Lies About Iraq ::

BBC was determined not to buckle over Iraq report
By Katherine Baldwin, MSNBC
LONDON, Sept. 24 — The chairman of the BBC told on Wednesday of his determination not to succumb to pressure from the British government to retract a disputed report on Iraq during a Titanic struggle that led to the suicide of a weapons expert.

Gavyn Davies, chairman of the BBC's governors, said he urged his fellow board members to stand by the report -- which questioned the case Prime Minister Tony Blair made for the Iraq war -- on the basis that BBC executives trusted their reporter's story to be correct.

Davies' evidence, given to the inquiry into the expert's death, comes after the explicit diaries of Blair's media chief Alastair Campbell revealed this week the government's fury over the BBC report and its obsession with discrediting it by outing the source, Iraq weapons expert David Kelly.

Kelly killed himself shortly after being named as the source for the report, which claimed the government had ''sexed up'' evidence of Iraq's banned weapons to justify war to a sceptical public. His death, the inquiry and the failure to find any such weapons in Iraq has plunged Blair into the worst political crisis of his six-year tenure.

Lord Hutton, chairing the inquiry, has said no one will be immune from criticism in his final report. The inquiry, to which Blair has given evidence, has put the government's case for war under intense scrutiny and raised questions over its handling of Kelly.

posted by me

:: 9:37:00 AM [+] ::
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