A good Hutton-based point from Edward Heathcoat-Amory:
“Hutton attacked the BBC hierarchy for allowing one of their journalists to criticise the government on the basis of one uncorroborated report from a source … But he was only too happy in another part of his report for the government to make the 45-minute claim on the basis of – yes – a single uncorroborated report from within Iraq”.
Obviously the intelligence source didn’t have their own agenda or axe to grind so anything they said about pink elephants had to be taken at face value with no confirmation whatsoever.
‘I have heard’ vs ‘it is widely believed’ vs ‘I reckon’ vs ‘I should think’ vs ‘I am sure’ vs ‘I am certain’ vs ‘there is proof’ – each iteration is only a small change – how many times do reports get re-drafted with only small changes such as these at each stage? Especially when they may be ‘subconsciously influenced’…? Gotta love that phrase…
Aren’t we still waiting for a full (i.e. complete) gov response from the FAC “The Decision to go to War in Iraq”? This was only published six months ago.
Consider a court case of ‘angry consumers’ v ‘dodgy businessbloke’.
Judge, summing up : ‘This is not, *technically speaking*, illegal. There has been insufficient independently-corroborated conclusive proof offered as evidence to *explicitly* point at actual illegal activities. Product performance claims are still under investigation.’
dodgy businessbloke : ‘This is a completely legitimate business operation. I have been totally exonerated of any wrongdoing. Product performance claims were the responsibility of an unconnected third party over which I had absolutely no influence whatsoever.’
angry consumers : ‘We still say it is a rip-off. We *know* he is a crook. This is a whitewash. Those product performance claims were bogus. He got his crony to do a fake review.’
What the judge is *trying* to say is : ‘This guy runs all the rackets in this town and the fallout from his conviction would cause more problems than it would solve. Besides, as a member of the local council he is above the law. Oh, and the business agent who advised the product documentation writers was not *technically* part of the dodgy businessbloke company *as such*.’