truth

how does the old saying go? the truth will out (or perhaps it is the truth is out there – but that would point out that i watched x-files... ooops just have).

the truth is a many splendid thing – one man’s truth is another man’s bare faced lie. the idea of absolute truth has been (and will continue to) argued over for thousands of years. most of us accept the world is a complicated and complex place made up of many shades of grey. we may wish it to be black and white, but we know it will never be.

people like michael moore will use the fact that no one challenges him in court as proof that he is telling the truth (mind you that is the same defence that david icke uses so i am not so sure that is necessarily one to hide behind). mostly i suspect that moore is not taken to court because his opponents do not see the point in getting into a debate with him over his claims because they know that in doing so gives him even more legitimacy, secondly they know that once a debate has been opened all arguments then come under scrutiny, and finally they know the truth is not an easy thing to prove.

what on earth or you going on about pat ?
well partly it is this story just off of the bbc website:
“intelligence officials have confirmed the us has stopped searching for weapons of mass destruction in iraq. “
the “existence” of these wmds is the main reason we went to war with iraq, in fact tony blair after the event continued to claim that wmd’s would be found now they had ousted saddam, they have not been. they were never going to be.
we are now left with:
“mr duelfer said when he released his interim report in october that former iraqi leader saddam hussein had still had the desire to restart wmd programmes, when he could.” which holds as much weight as my desire to have sharon stone sit on my face.
the importance of this story is huge, especially for the bbc. the bbc came under attack from the government of tony blair for daring to say that they had “sexed” up the existence of wmds to make it easier to go to war.
but by jingo they did, do they regret, goodness gracious i don’t think so. (oops that’s me swiping doonesbury doing his impression of rumsfeld. it is funnier when he does it.
at the time of hutton report the truth was blair’s truth, now it appears that truth is not so true anymore!

following on from that the daily telegraph (among others) are reporting that mi6 is to hire a quality control watchdog in order to safeguard the quality of it’s intelligence. apparently “a businessman with management experience had already been appointed before the report's release to check the agency's overall operations”.
now i am missing something here – and i might be doing the businessman in question a disservice (unless of course it is digby and then i am spot on…) but what on earth do they know about the events and information that the intelligence services are reporting on? how are they to know they have gotten the full story ? how are they to validate it – use google ? get their secretary to phone someone up?
surely this is something that has to be done within the service and frankly questions of validity are the things that the government who is using the information should be raising – especially before it goes to war based on it all.
(and yes there are issues where hold on if this is information that can’t be used in court because of national security how can it be allowed to go to an external agency for vetting – what the private sector is more trustworthy than the judiciary ?)

the butler report had said “had thin sources.
it only had five main sources on the ground in iraq. it also gave more credence to untried agents than normal and had agents working beyond their expertise.” again someone senior in whitehall and the government should have asked the question at the time….
but they didn’t and guess what we went to war and we now find there was not a shred of evidence.
in my mind having an outside agency involved is not going to help especially if they are of the quality of group 4 or jarvis, with those in charge you know we probably would have invaded the wrong country……
and what are they going to call it? offshh! or ofcensored ?