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UK DISPATCH
Tony Blair on borrowed time
BY DONALD MAHONEY

The fallout of the war in Iraq has produced a study in contrasts if ever there was one. The leaders of both the US and Britain sent their countries into war with lies. But where George W. Bush and Co. seem to have eluded scrutiny — save the recent dust-up over those 16 words in his State of the Union address — Tony Blair is having a hellish summer. It hit a breathtaking low this month when Dr. David Kelly, a former UN weapons inspector and mole for the BBC’s now-infamous story that the British government exaggerated its intelligence as it proceeded down the road to war, was discovered dead in the woods outside his Oxfordshire home. While the majority of victims in the Iraq war are bound to remain nameless, Dr. Kelly’s suicide must be added to a growing list of political casualties among the so-called coalition of the willing — a list Blair, and even Bush, for all their hubris, may end up on.

If he’d been wise, Blair would have followed his rapturous welcome in Washington by holing up in the White House raising money for the Republican Party, rather than returning home to face the formal hearings on Kelly’s death, which opened this week. For, as Blair’s 37 percent approval rating in a recent Guardian poll indicates, the British have lost their fancy for their prime minister. Though American pundits and public alike may drool over what Slate’s Michael Kinsley called Blair’s " rhetorical courage " last Thursday, Blair’s political career is imploding. At home, his unflinching support for Bush’s war looks at best like an act of political hara-kirinobly conceived, but piercing and lethal nonetheless. And now, the unending Kelly scandal amounts to one long, slow turn of the sword. As if it weren’t hard enough to ease a skeptical public’s misgivings about phantasmic weapons of mass destruction and simmering guerrilla warfare in Iraq, the embarrassing mismanagement of the Kelly ordeal has exposed the ugly, cutthroat side of Blair’s regime.

That Kelly would have spent the rest of his days as an invaluable expert on biological and chemical weapons if he hadn’t gotten mixed up in the epic joustings of 10 Downing Street and the BBC is the saddest irony of the saga: after his discussions with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, he became the " high-level, " anonymous source within the British Ministry of Defence in a story claiming that Blair’s top spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, " sexed up " intelligence during the prelude to war on Iraq. As the sound bite of Blair ominously claiming Iraq could strike Europe in 45 minutes began to loop over, a maelstrom ensued. Feeling the heat from the media and the bewilderment of the public, the British government demanded the name of the source; upholding journalistic ethics, the BBC refused to cite Kelly. When, within a week, 10 Downing Street began to leak Kelly’s name to the press, telling the Times it was " 99 percent certain " he was the source, it seemed as though his bosses were sacrificing Kelly regardless of his role in the scandal. And two weeks ago, when Kelly denied in sworn testimony that he had ever made the statements to Gilligan, the story turned mind-boggling: cries from the likes of Campbell that the BBC manipulated the story echoed against persistent murmurs that Kelly was keeping something hidden. Forty-eight hours after his testimony, on Friday, July 18, Kelly’s body was found, his wrists slit, the cold fact of his suicide ending a certain level of speculation while raising an infinite number of questions. A special hearing will begin within days to determine, among other things, what exactly drove Kelly to take his life and what knowledge he took to his grave.

While the scandal centers on whether Kelly actually said the Minister of Defence had " sexed-up " his intelligence, in particular the " 45 minutes " claim, the realities of postwar Iraq cast a light on the controversy that seems altogether damning to Blair and his government. A temporary salve came when the BBC named Kelly as its source the day after his death, thereby opening itself to claims that Gilligan had distorted Kelly’s statements. But the Beeb stood steadfastly behind its reporter, supposedly in the wake of a newsroom revolt, and gradually the story’s momentum shifted back to the British government’s recklessness in leaking Kelly’s name. After all, this scandal is not about fair reporting, or even Kelly’s suicide. Ultimately, it concerns the prosecution of a controversial war of aggression, justified on flimsy, even doctored, grounds. That a respected member of the government chose to end his life, unable to live with the burden his employers thrust on him, doesn’t help Blair’s already tarnished credibility. And though the prime minister says he will not resign — nor will Campbell or Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon — count Kelly’s death as yet another ethically implicating event for which all three will have to answer.

Yet there’s something refreshingly democratic about the way the entire ordeal is evolving. Lord Hutton, a judge from the Northern Ireland tribunals, will convene the hearing, and he promises it will be mostly public and as far-reaching as he chooses. British voters seem eager to judge Blair for following America into war on false pretenses, as well as for a larger pattern of deception that seems partly to blame for Kelly’s death. No matter the finding, the Labour Party seems to have an unelectable candidate. It’s a far cry from W.’s universe, where the ends always justify the means. But a lesson in political karma may still await George Bush. The higher-ups in American intelligence may have passed the buck for the yellowcake scandal on to the Brits, but one wonders if anyone will be left to take the fall for Bush next time around.


Issue Date: August 1 - 7, 2003
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