Hahahahahahaha. This is going to drive La Vanguardia’s apparently deranged plagiarist and liar Rafael Ramos completely bonkers. After months of him telling us, allegedly from London, that Blair’s lies and the BBC’s overwhelming saintliness were about to be exposed for all to see, it seems that Hutton has said the opposite. Now, I’m sure The Sun is spinning for all it’s worth, but isn’t it time Ramos stopped fulminating via his posterior end and became something useful, like a bollard?

Bollard by Bohlmann, Inc, who have been making prestigious concrete tables, benches, traffic barrier and security planters, planters, commercial planters, drinking fountains, trash receptacles, ash urns, signs, mailboxes, lamp posts and bird baths since 1950.

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1. martin
   January 30th 2004 12:25

   I think you’ll find an overwhelming number of comentators agree with Ramos. I realise the report wasn’t out when you wrote this, but try googling “Hutton” and “whitewash”.

2. Trevor
   January 30th 2004 15:12

   “Overwhelming” is an overstatement. Sure, there are lots of people out their who will continue to believe their own personal demon rather than what Hutton’s demon found and saw, but it’s a bit strange that most of them were saying at the end of the summer what a fine fellow Hutton was, never afraid to speak the truth if it meant ruffling establishment feathers, etc etc. And now it seems he’s a CIA agent. Confusing!

3. martin
   January 30th 2004 20:38

   I don’t think it’s just a question of personal demons, Trevor, it’s about the judge’s treatment of the facts that are available to all of us.

   Gilligan was an arse and there were important errors committed by his bosses. However, the fact that Alastair Campbell didn’t come in for a severe bashing goes to show what a farce the whole enquiry has been.

4. Franco Alemán
   January 31st 2004 19:34

   did you see Ramos’ profile of Hutton the day before the report was published? of course, that’s when he still thought the verdict would be totally opposite and would bring down Blair.

5. jordi
   February 1st 2004 21:41

   I’m writing from London and “overwhelming” is far from an overstatement. Just chek today’s newspapers covers here and you’ll see that the majority of newspapers, even the Mail on Sunday, think that Hutton’s conclusions were too biased putting all the blame on the BBC and completely exonerating the government.

   As for what they were saying of Hutton in summer I will only remind you of what they were all saying about Greg Dike when he was appointed DG portraying him as more blairite than Blair himself… Even the most clued-up journalists get things wrong and foreign correspondents, who most of the time only reflect the prevalent opinion across media, are even more likely to get it wrong..

6. Trevor
   February 2nd 2004 08:32

   I think it’s important to distinguish between Hutton – who covered the ground he was asked to cover – and the wider issue of war aims and their justification. On the first, I think that in the UK you’ll find as many commentators saying that Hutton did Blair a severe disfavour by not slagging the MoD as are saying that it was a whitewash. That suggests that Hutton got it about right in political terms, even though was surely neither his intent nor concern. The phrase “benefit of the doubt” is being bandied about in an attempt to smear no 10, but since there’s no evidence that they did anything wrong I can’t personally see where the element of doubt comes in. If you think that it’s OK for state employees to violate their contracts and for journalists to propagate with impunity lies capable of blowing an elected government out of the water, then it sounds like you’re calling for an end to democratic politics and the modern state.

   Since there is no evidence that British politicians invented or sponsored the invention of the WMD claim, the subsequent debate should focus on two questions. Firstly, with no WMDs in evidence, and given the fact that war aims always shift during operations (can you think of any project in which you have been involved that ended up achieving exactly what was set out in the original project plan?), whether we can look back on the war and say it was worth fighting. I think it was, both because of the change underway in Iraq and because of the way it has provided a catalyst for positive developments in other problematic states in the region. Secondly, whether intelligence gathering and processing needs improvement. I think it clearly does, and that as much as possible of that debate should be conducted in public.

   Finally, there are lots of decent foreign correspondents, a few very good ones, and a few shameful disasters. Ramos is one of the latter.

7. RoRo
   February 2nd 2004 16:58

   You must be really slow if you think Blair will hold an inquiry on the intelligence basis of the war. That would finish him

8. Trevor
   February 2nd 2004 19:46

   I think you’re just about to lose this particular bet.

9. RoRo
   February 3rd 2004 11:42

   You knew that was coming didn’t you

10. Trevor
    February 3rd 2004 12:29

    Me, I don’t know what day it is.

11. martin
    February 4th 2004 00:18

    You took the words right out of my keyboard.

12. Trevor
    February 4th 2004 00:21

    Glad to help where I can ;o)