David Kelly

Posted on 2003/07/20 14:35:12 (July 2003) by john.

Storm in a teacup? Or a turning point in British politics?

I haven't been as shocked by a news story for a long time as I was when I visited the BBC News website on Friday. Since then I've struggled to get my mind off it.

The irony being, it was a name I hadn't even heard of at the time.

This is, of course, the Death of David Kelly, who, it appears, took his own life. David Kelly, for those not in the know, was a weapons expert working for the ministry of defence. It has since come out that he was the source at the MoD who told the BBC that intelligence on Iraqi weapons was exaggerated before being presented to the public, in order to help the case for going to war. This scenario has turned into a massive conflict between the government and the BBC over the past few weeks. As a result, David Kelly had been thrust unwillingly into the limelight. As his family put it "Events over recent weeks made David's life intolerable and all of those involved should reflect long and hard on this fact". (For the full statement see here)

Normally, political comings and goings more or less wash over me, but this event seems to me to be somehow of monumentous importance, although I can't yet work exactly why. Obviously there is the human aspect, this is not just a resignation or a sleaze scandal. A real person has died, and everyone agrees a real tragedy has occurred. Something about the man himself really bring it home - David Kelly seems like a totally normal human being, the sort of guy you can imagine standing behind in the queue at the newsagents, or nodding to and saying hello when you're out walking your dog. As we're generally so distant from those involved in the media, they often seem like soulless entities, more like characters in a film than real people. Somehow not so with Dr Kelly. His family are clearly devastated, not only is it a tragedy to lose a family member under any circumstances, but it must in a way feel like he has been swept away from them in some sort of media whirlwind.

In terms of the public side of this tragedy, however, I have some irrational feeling of the signficance of it all that I can't quite quantify in words. One member of the public, commenting on the BBC News website put it very well: "What a colossal, almost Shakespearean tragedy" (More opinions here). It does have that feeling of high drama, something grand and out of the ordinary. Perhaps, for the public as a whole, something deeply unsettling.

Not unlike many other people, I imagine, I have many unanswered questions. Perhaps first and foremost, it simply seems difficult to believe that such an intelligent and settled man with such a close family could be driven to suicide simply by media attention and the hard time he had been given by the authorities. If it really was suicide, I can't help but think there must be something more to it, something else that had been done or said to him that forced him into such a desperate state. The Sunday Mirror apparently said government officials were concerned that Dr Kelly had disclosed "a killer fact". To be honest, I'd prefer to take everything I read in the Mirror with a pinch of salt, but still...

Before and during the Iraq war I often heard mentioned the belief that something was being held back. The government's reason for going to war seemed to change each week - either it was terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction, or the humanitarian issue, or stability in the middle east. The case for all of these was always a bit vague (apart from perhaps the humanitarian issue), and you didn't have to be a crazed conspiracy theorist to get the feeling Tony and the rest of them knew something they weren't letting on. Several respectable BBC reporters had discussed exactly that in their reports.

The death of David Kelly seems to me to perpetuate this uneasy feeling. Did he know something further the government would rather us not find out? Had he already said too much by just telling the BBC that infamous dossier had been doctored? Or was his apparent hounding by officials simply down to the MoD's frustration that one of their members was not "on side"?

To add further confusion to this already very complex affair, it transpires Dr Kelly sent emails just hours before his death (see here) which he talked in a positive way about his plans for the future - a further visit to Iraq for example. If he had already planned to end his life then, he certainly wasn't showing it.

I suppose in a sense we're still trying to answer the same question here - was it right to go to war with Iraq? The only possible way I can try to justify it in my mind is the humanitarian aspect - it is well known that people were treated terribly under Saddam's regime. Torture and execution were commonplace even for just speaking your mind. The people of Iraq undoutedly deserve a better standard of life. However, have they really got it since the end of the war? We constantly hear reports of how there is utter chaos on the streets of Iraq's cities, violence and looting are widespread, and there seems to be little sign of law and order. The coalition forces seemed very well prepared for the military operations, but very ill prepared for the aftermath - the distribution of aid, the policing and the rebuilding of society. Does that sound to you like a war whose aim was to improve the lives of the Iraqi people?

It's probably an argument that will go on indefinitely, and we'll never know the real answer. Maybe the same will be true of David Kelly. We can't ever know exactly what was going through his head that Thursday. Let's just hope somehow or other lessons can be learned, and in some way or other some good can emmerge from this tragedy.

Here's another question. Is he related to Henry Kelly? And if so, that's a good reason to kill yourself.

Posted by tom at 2003/07/22 14:22:59.

...or indeed Matthew Kelly...? Or Gene Kelly?

Posted by John at 2003/07/22 14:31:07.

Or Lorraine Kelly?

Posted by tom at 2003/07/23 24:00:36.

I cannot fathom how the three people who have to date posted to date on this article on the death of Dr David Kelly, could make such distasteful and frivilious comments of a man's death.

They owe Dr Kelly's family a sincere apology.

I am dumbfounded at the human ability for callousness

Posted by Trevor Bradly at 2003/09/08 02:49:55.

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