intelligence for war; intelligence for law

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dr David Kelly was not described as looking particularly depressed by
those who saw him just before his death. 

Suicide of course may not be caused by mental illness or even symptoms of
mental illness. It can also be caused by guilt or anger.

He may have felt he had been cornered into lying about what he said to
the BBC journalist about Alastair Campbell sexing up the September
dossier, and about Campbell inserting the 45 minute claim. Supposedly
very careful with words, he said he could not remember the "sexed
up" phrase. Perhaps the truth is that the BBC reported Gilligan put
the formula to him unobtrusively and casually and he nodded agreement.
The inquiry will also have to find out if he had himself seen an earlier
version of the document from intelligence chiefs with 45 minutes in it.

But this man had been in Iraq as recently as June, and had plenty of
experience of facing down officials of the Iraqi regime over 12
years.  

Scott Ritter said of him:

"While a gentle man, he had a core of steel in him. I've seen him
interact with Iraq government officials; there was no give in this
man." 

Maybe his computer hard disc will give more information and Miss Marples
in the form of judge Hunter, will have to read lots of transcripts from
it for his inquiry.

The Press Association 
Sunday July 20, 2003 12:23 PM quotes the New York Times:-

> Weapons expert Dr David Kelly told of
> "many dark actors playing games" in an e-mail to a journalist
> hours before his suicide.
> The words appeared to refer to officials at the Ministry of Defence and
> UK intelligence agencies with whom he had sparred over interpretations of
> weapons reports, according to the New York Times.
> The message gave no indication that he was depressed and said he was
> waiting "until the end of the week" before judging how his
> appearance before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee had
> gone.
> The newspaper did not name the recipient of the e-mail. It said another
> associate had received a "combative" message from Dr Kelly
> shortly before he left his Oxfordshire home for the last time on
> Thursday.
> The scientist said in the e-mail that he was determined to overcome the
> scandal surrounding him and was enthusiastic about the possibility of
> returning to Iraq.


Kelly is described as a quiet determined man who believed in the
importance of science. His main complaint about the government was that
it had published any intelligence information at all. He preferred to
give informal off the record briefings to journalists, and was foolish
enough to have continued these at a time of mounting controversy. 

I agree with Jurriaan that the interface between the intensely personal
and the political is difficult to follow in the era of 24 hour and
reality television. It seems possible that individually David Kelly had a
sudden chaotic mental episode which ended with him focussed on suicide.
My guess is that the main motivation was anger, not despair or guilt at
his loss of credibility. An overcontrolled man, he may have been seized
with the conviction that the most powerful thing he could do was to
ensure the fall of ministers if not the whole government by his suicide.
Perhaps his life blood seeping into the Oxfordshire countryside seemed to
give it poignancy. We will never know, but such emotions may make the
difference between successful and merely attempted suicides. 

The broader pattern this fits into  the problem of the intelligence
services in an era of Empire, before the world has established rules of
international justice and law enforcement.

If Blair is right that "history will forgive" Bush and himself
for attacking Iraq, although Iraq in the end had no weapons of mass
destruction, that would be so only if people take the broadest sweep.
That sweep includes that there are a lot of injustices in the world. It
is not always possible to abide by the detail of the rule of law, even
when proclaiming it as a universal human value. That faced with terrorism
the enemy must be crushed if necessary by assassination. That realpolitik
required Britain to side with the USA on condition that the USA would
force Israel to compomise once Palestinian suicide bombers had been
crushed. The real terrorist connection of Iraq was with the families of
the Palestinian suicide bombers.

Blair tried to persuade Bush to accept some sort of rudimentary due
process against Iraq by going through the Security Council.

The problems are that if national sovereignty is to be torn up in the
emerging era of Empire, it might be logical if the USA says it finds a
country like Iraq untrustworthy and insists on regime change. But due
process is more difficult.

Unfortunately the intelligence services often know what they do not
know.

Even judged by the importance of collating intelligence for the purpose
of prosecuting a successful war, once again the most powerful
intelligence services were deficient (as they were during the cold war
with the former Soviet Union). They failed to predict accurately whether
in going to war with the Iraqi regime they would have to face biological
and chemical weapons. Although they were accurate that there would not be
uncontrollable uprisings across the middle east toppling one ally after
another, they failed to predict the level of resistance among the Shias
and the guerrilla warfare among the followers of Saddam and the Sunnis
which has already caused more deaths of US personnel than the previous
Gulf war.

Intelligence for war has to focus on the worst case scenario, and
typically even here it failed.

Intelligence to provide evidence for a quasi judicial international trial
at the Security Council as a sort of Imperial court however, has to be
evaluated on a threshold of evidence. On the balance of probabilities?
Beyond reasonable doubt? The threshold was thoroughly confused, and
confused again with the worst case scenario. This is a key confusion
about the argument over the 45 minutes claim and whether the Saddam
regime was an immediate threat requiring war against it, or if war
started, whether there was an immediate threat of using WMD. 

(The latest twist in the British media is that the idea behind 45 minutes
in the British document, was that was the maximum length of time it would
take Saddam to tell his battle commanders to use them - assuming they had
them in operational form....) 

Dr David Kelly was a quiet member of the British imperialist
intelligentsia with and earnest sense of his duty. His suicide may be the
most dramatic way of ensuing that the USA can never rely again even on it
closest ally Britain, to join it in a hegemonistic coalition of the
willing, in disregard of due process. 

It may ensure that intelligence material is used much more
carefully.

Perhaps a statue will be erected to him in times to come.


Indeed it adds to the pressure that is obliging the USA to concede it may
even have to go back to the United Nations to get a new resolution to
legitimise occupation, before it can get other countries to relieve it of
the ironically heavy burdens of victory.

Kelly is dead and Blair may fall. In the wider scheme of things I think
these individual stories have to be placed in the context of the
accelerating trends towards global Empire, global civil society, and
global law, run by the new global intelligentsia (and unfortunately in
the service of ever more rational expoitation by finance capital - unless
someone does something about that)

The contradictions between hegemonists, and rule of law people, between
unilaterialists and multilateralists, are all part of the dialectical
process through which this is emerging in front of our eyes.

 One fundamental factor is the granularity of knowledge. It is never
perfect. It is always subjective. It is always partial.

In a confused way as governments and intelligence services fight to
apportion blame for the information that led to the Iraq war, perhaps Dr
David Kelly thought that knowledge was perfectly objective if only
scientists could be respected and left behind the screens. Perhaps he was
still not cynical enough after all these years. Perhaps his suicide was a
cry of defiance against mystically conceived dark forces. Perhaps in
finding personal peace he thought he was finding the light.

Chris Burford

London