It was presumably clear to those in MI6 that Blair had already decided to go to war, so what would have been in it for them to try and persuade him otherwise? Probably an early retirement at best.
It's deeply saddening to think that hundreds of people were more interested in protecting their position and pension than they were in doing the right thing. It's an astonishing failure of moral courage.
Mind you, places like ARRSE are fond of pointing out that many a senior general seems to rediscover their morals in their memoirs once they retire!
The BBC was chastised & curtailed for standing by journalism that in hindsight was true and important.
Or an early grave. As in the case of the person who did try to blow the whistle.
However, it is a useful mental exercise to listen to a hypothesis, perform research, synthesize your own theories and form a well rounded opinion on a topic that may, on the surface, seem impossible.
There are conspiracies surrounding his death, but regardless of them it is fair to say that he was driven to an early grave.
Whether a black op or not... it's certainly discouraging to a potential whistleblower.
> It was presumably clear to those in MI6 that Blair had already decided to go to war, so what would have been in it for them to try and persuade him otherwise? Probably an early retirement at best.
Which was replied to with a comment about ending up in an early grave. David Kelly, even if you believe he was killed by the government, was not killed because he tried to convince the Prime Minister not to go to war. His untimely demise came from pressure related to him leaking confidential information to the press. In my opinion those are two different things and I intended to address the former not the latter.
Also, to be clear. I think David Kelly was right and what he went through was incredibly fucked up.
(A point I keep trying to make about the War on Terror is that trying to do it invisibly, with intelligence agencies, is tempting but ineffective. These agencies cannot be effectively reviewed, and produce intelligence which cannot be used in court or presented to the public. So we end up with a long series of unaccountable murders by drone feeding into whatever the next Arab civil war is.
Whereas a policing approach would produce evidence for inspection in public, after which those convicted of terrorism could be imprisoned with our consciences clear.)
Arguably it is the responsibility of leaders not to tilt their hands before the intelligence is available.
To what extent do our agencies "create" the terrorists that they're rewarded to fight against?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-p...
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/01/23/just-another-term-o...
The decision not to change venue was later upheld on appeal, with a dissent:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
Perhaps in this particular case the decision wasn't wrong but it's not hard to imagine other, worse scenarios. And in these foreign terrorism cases there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on, like bribing random governments to identify and kidnap suspects for us to interrogate. Faced with the choice of (a) not doing that kind of stuff anymore, (b) letting the accused terrorists go free because our questionable activities violated their rights or tainted the evidence against them, or (c) interpreting the law to make all this stuff allowed, I'm not sure I want to find out what we would pick.
1) Warrants. In general, you need to go to a magistrate judge in the district where property or a person may be found in order to get a warrant. There is a "terrorism exception" which allows a magistrate judge to issue warrants for people or things outside their district. In my opinion that's a bad exception. The venue requirement has the important benefit of requiring local cooperation for an investigation that's probably run out of D.C. The "terrorism exception" to venue gets rid of that. And giving process to foreign terrorists would entail expanding that exception so judges in D.C. would routinely be asked to issue warrants for people and places totally outside their jurisdiction in foreign countries.
2) 4th Amendment. The 4th amendment inherently requires a balancing between the legitimate needs of policing and the rights of individuals. Giving foreign terrorists due process will require extending the 4th amendment to them, but also in the process adding new holes necessitated by doing police work in a foreign country. It's not inconceivable that some "exigent circumstances" hole originally created for terrorists embedded within armed groups abroad gets applied to domestic criminals embedded within organized gangs.
3) Due process rights generally. It's very likely that the due process rules will be relaxed when applied to foreign terrorists, out of exigency if nothing else. Due process is a luxury the government can afford domestically because it has a near-complete monopoly on violence on U.S. soil. Do you stop and read someone their Miranda rights while in the mountains of Pakistan? When foreign terrorism is considered a military rather than civilian matter, there is in effect a "firewall" that keeps domestic due process rights from being watered down. Remove that firewall, and you'll see precedents from terrorism cases flowing back into organized crime cases on U.S. soil.[1] That sort of diffusion is inevitable in a common law system.
4) Trials in abstentia. The right to face one's accuser is fundamental to due process. So what do you do with a foreign terrorist that you can't capture alive? It will never be acceptable to people to just let them go. If you require criminal process for those people, you'll inevitably end up with some kangaroo-court trial in abstentia. And you'll end up with precedent that says: "well, sometimes, facing your accusers isn't required by due process."
[1] You already see this effect in U.S. law, where laws like RICO designed for mobsters or precedents developed for the drug war are being levied against non-violent criminals.
How do you police land that you don't govern or control? Drones are used in Pakistan tribal areas, Yemen, and Somolia. Three places without US forces to make apprehensions. Places that if you were to land US forces, they'd get met with armed resistance. There is no police approach that would actually work.
Traditionally, you don't; police services have jurisdictions within which they operate. We're not sending the British Metropolitan Police over to investigate the murder of Alton Sterling, for example.
The lack of availability of legal means does not legitimize the use of illegal means. The "Operation Wrath Of God" retaliation by Israeli security forces going round murdering terrorists in Europe went down incredibly badly but fortunately stopped after the first misidentified target. How would you expect the US to react if Chinese security forces started bombing US apartment buildings to kill Chinese expat dissidents?
The instability of those areas and lack of traditional policing isn't incidental to the threat of terrorism, it's completely connected to it. The only way out of this in the long term is to expand impartial rule of law. Remote assassination without trial is contrary to the rule of law.