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the government to re-open the investigation into Kelly's death--which cries out for a real investigation?
Kelly and other scientists tried to keep the Dodgy Dossier more honest, but when it was cooked, they didn't say anything publicly at first. Kelly supported the war because he thought removal of Saddam would be good for Iraqis. He had friends in Iraq. What turned him around--into a whistleblower--3 months into the war is impossible to know for sure. Could have been Bushite torture, looting, chaos--it became obvious that their motives were bad and the occupation would be terrible. Could have been "shock and awe"--the sheer carnage of the bombing and invasion--which killed !00,000 people, according to the British doctors' report. Or, it could have been something Kelly learned in the interim--which is what some people (including me) suspect--that he knew something more than he had told the BBC (that the pre-war intel had been "sexed up"). There is evidence for this--that he knew something more--as well as the evidence of his death itself, which was almost certainly murder. What would be the reason for his murder? That he knew something even more damning--and was already "off the reservation" (a whistleblower) and would reveal it.
A good candidate for what he knew: A Bush/Blair scheme to plant WMDS in Iraq, to be "discovered" by the U.S. troops who were hunting for them, after the invasion. The plan could still have been in motion at the time of his death. Or it could be that it had already been foiled by someone. In any case, no WMDs were found--despite Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Blair confident and repeated assurances that they WOULD BE. Mere knowledge that such a scheme had been attempted and had been foiled by someone, or was in progress, could get you dead. Kelly--a UN weapons inspector, well-connected, with friends in Iraq--was in a good position to have heard of it, and could have had hand in foiling it.
These dates are interesting:
7/14/03: Valerie Plame--important CIA counter-proliferation agent--outed.
7/18/03: Kelly found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.
7/22/03: Plame's front company, Brewster-Jennings, ADDITIONALLY outed (also by Novak), putting yet more CIA covert agents/contacts at risk of getting killed.
These dates are just a bit too coicindency for me. And there are many more connections. Panic among the Bushites (at Wilson's op-ed)--they commit treason and out an agent. Panic among the Blairities--somebody whistleblowing about the WMD intel (mucking up a plan, or about to expose it). They hunt him down and interrogate him at a "safe house." He turns up dead. Then Novak ADDITIONALLY outs the whole CIA network.
I don't think this was just about words--"sexed up" intel--the news game. So they exaggerated things before the war? What government doesn't? And what did they have to fear from the lapdog press in 2003? It feels deeper--a deeper fear, and even rage. Their scheme got foiled!
It's a good theory--with a lot of in's and out's that answer a lot of puzzling questions about those events. But whether it was just Bushite/Blairite P.R. concerns that got Plame and B/J outed, and David Kelly killed, or there was something more behind it, it's important to realize that Kelly was the FIRST to go public--in May 03. Joe Wilson didn't publish his article til July 6 (the supposed trigger for the Plame outings). But there was a simultaneous crisis "on the other side of the pond," regarding Kelly's anonymous disclosures to the BBC, on the same issue. They were interrogating Kelly in the first week of July, leading up to Wilson's publication. And the next things that happen are Plame is outed and Kelly is dead.
Imagine you are Donald Rumsfeld, and either your scheme to plant the weapons has been foiled, or it was still in motion--not yet achieved. If you are Rumsfeld, you would punish and silence those who had foiled you, and perhaps take even more drastic action to prevent the plan from being foiled, if was still happening. And just imagine what it would have been like had such a scheme succeeded--their triumphant announcement that WMDs had been found!
You can dis Kelly for objecting too late (as someone does on this thread). Or you can have compassion for someone who realized his mistake too late, and tried to do the right thing, shortly before he died--that is, alert the public that they had been lied to, that the justifications for the war were false. He paid for that effort with his life. And if he helped to foil that rotten scheme, he is even more of a hero.
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