Scientist 'must have been murdered'(David Kelly)

[cal04]

The Hutton Inquiry's finding that David Kelly committed suicide does not "hold water", and the truth is that the Government scientist must have been murdered, said a senior backbench MP.

Following a personal investigation lasting eight months, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said he did not believe that Prime Minister Tony Blair or the Government were "actually responsible for his death".

But he declined to say who he did believe was to blame, telling GMTV's The Sunday Programme that he had narrowed down his investigation to three or four possible explanations, which he was subjecting to further analysis before announcing his conclusions.

The Lewes MP revealed he had received a plausible explanation for some of the mysteries surrounding the weapons inspector's death from an unnamed individual who he said was in a position to know what happened.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6438792,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704

[Stargazer99]

1. From day 1 I said this scientist no more commited sucide

than a bull can fly. This should scare the hell out of US citizens but I guess the sheep will believe anything just so they won't have to think for themselves. If this administration is willing to out Plame, murdering a scientist is very much in the realm of a possiblity. All those associated with Plame could be murdered as spys...but who gives a damn apparently not conservative Republicans. But then again why should they care...just look at the fraud, deception and lawlessness that they've been caught at...much less what has not be put before the public. And their conservative whine about Clinton is laughable.

[Kagemusha]

4. I make no conclusions but, that cause of death stuff made no sense

I also didn't hear of cases cited that were at all comparable where death had been found to have been caused with such little blood loss apparent.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. I never believed the official lie either K&R n/t

[yellowcanine]

8. I think we would be wise to wait for further developments before going out on the "he was

murdered" limb. If one reads the account of what the MP said about his findings it seems to me there is still a lot of speculation and very little to go on here. What did the MP actually find? That he has "narrowed down his investigation to three or four possible explanations, which he was subjecting to further analysis before announcing his conclusions."

I am sorry but I need a bit more than that before I allow my panties to get twisted up into a wad. If that makes me one of your "sheep", well then "baa, baa." But a healthy dose of skepticism toward those flogging conspiracy theories (on any topic) doesn't seem to me to be a sheep-like characteristic so I think you are a tad out of line there, as well as a bit condescending.

[mhatrw]

13. If it wasn't suicide, what other possibilities are we left with besides

murder?

[yellowcanine]

15. Backwards reasoning. One has to have evidence of homicide or accident before

ruling out suicide.

[mhatrw]

19. No. One has evaluate all the evidence and look for the most likely

explanation in consideration of all of the evidence. Like the MP in the OP, I can't see how suicide qualifies. What do the atttending paramedics think?

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,,1372078,00.html

Bartlett's eyes do not waver. 'Yes. I have always said that had it been a member of my family I wouldn't have accepted what they came out with.'

Sitting next to Bartlett is his colleague, Vanessa Hunt. Like him, she has been a paramedic for more than 15 years. She does not hesitate either. 'There just wasn't a lot of dblood... When somebody cuts an artery, whether accidentally or intentionally, the blood pumps everywhere. I just think it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw.' ...

They have no answers to the questions they have been asking themselves over the past 12 months, but they seem certain of one thing: Kelly could not have died from the wound they saw on his left wrist in the woods that Friday morning. ...

Martin Birnstingl was until recently president of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain. He is a former consultant at St Bartholomew's Hospital in Lonon and one of the country's most respected vascular surgeons. Birnstingl said he believed it was 'extremely unlikely' for Kelly to have died by simply severing the ulnar artery. He explained that arteries have muscles around them that will constrict when severed, to prevent life-threatening loss of blood. 'It would spray blood around and make a mess. But after the blood pressure started to fall, the artery would contract and stop bleeding,' he said.

[yellowcanine]

21. I think that is what I said. If there is no evidence of homicide or accident, the default is the

only thing there was evidence for - suicide. You ruled out suicide without considering whether there was indeed any evidence for homicide (and also mistakenly assumed that there wasn't another option - accident)

[peacetalksforall]

2. An opening to an unraveling of the suicide lie could bounce over

here across the water?

[JackRiddler]

3. Kick and Rec

There's a brave MP who knows murder must out.

[villager]

9. Will Lady Macbush soon be saying "out, damned spot?"

n/t

[halobeam]

5. 5th rec for Mr. Kelly

TRUTH OUT

[Jcrowley]

6. K&R n/t

[cascadiance]

10. I think the reason he is dead has a LOT to do with why Plame was outed!

I still also find it hard to believe that someone in this administration would commit a crime of outing a CIA agent that could carry a death penalty with it simply to get "revenge" on Joseph Wilson! That just doesn't make sense. There would have been many other ways to get "revenge" on Wilson that didn't carry the same risk that still faces whoever is discovered to have outed Plame. I still believe that Brewster Jennings and Kelley were on to something! Looks like that is becoming more and more likely now. I wish I'd known this before I saw Scott Ritter speak today a few hours ago. I would have followed up an earlier question that I framed to him on KLSD a while back on whether David Kelley's death was related to some form of WMD tampering going on in Iraq that might now be going on in Iran too, now that this death looks even more suspicious.

Earlier Ritter responded he didn't think that WMD evidence could be tampered with that would "fool" inspectors, but it's hard to know what sort of actions might have been covered up here and whether they might be something he would have been able to spot or in another area altogether.

[flyarm]

11. google up nelda rogers

from my files..old...not sure if links still work..having problems with my computer so i can't open the links..fly



http://www.singlenesia.com/news/cache/?p=030812-02&l=ht...



Here is another link:

July 2, 2003
Pentagon Whistleblower Reveals CIA/DoD Fiascos

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt. Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department, the Bush administration's assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a CIA plan to "plant" WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by "friendly fire."
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266752.shtml 20.06.2003 <08:07>

A DoD whistleblower details an attempt by a covert US team to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The team was later killed by friendly fire due to CIA incompetence. In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw.com <http://www.almartinraw.com /> has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert-operations team had planted "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMDs) in Iraq, then "lost" them when the team was killed by so-called "friendly fire."

The Pentagon whistleblower, Nelda Rogers, is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the Defense Department. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, "Ms. Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense."

The information that is being leaked out is information "obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the Department of Defense and/or the Central Intelligence Agency. "According to Ms. Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq," reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides "Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence."

Al Martin is a retired Lt. Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider, " and he is considered one of America's foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms. Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by ex-military personnel and that "the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace."

According to Al Martin Raw.com, "the Ag Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, and NSA and others." Accordng to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms. Rogers' report concerns a covert operation which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities.

The problem became evident when "the operation in Iraq involved 100

[flyarm]

12. not for one minute did i believe Dr Kelly killed himself..his first and oldest daughter

was getting married in Sept that year..and he had written an email i forget to who i used to have it in my files..but he said he couldn't wait to go back to Iraq ..but he had to wait as his oldest daughter was getting married..

no man is going to commit suicide on the door step to his daughter getting married..especially when he talked about it in an email..that he was walking his daughter down the isle for her wedding!!

no way no how!!

fly

[yellowcanine]

17. Are you a psychologist or otherwise an expert on suicide? If not, how can you say

"no way no how?" If someone is suffering from depression and has suicidal thoughts conventional reasoning is not going to apply.

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. He predicted he would killed during a walk in the woods, for crying out loud!

Three physicians have stated categorically that he could not have committed suicide; the evidence precluded it.

[yellowcanine]

22. Link for those claims?

[crickets]

24. The information is not hard to find.

I remember reading about the comment as well, but thought it would be quicker to Google than dig through bookmarks. It took two searches, one general and one specific. Elapsed time: about three minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly

At about 15:00, Kelly told his wife that he was going for a walk as he did every day. He appears to have gone directly to an area of woodlands known as Harrowdown Hill about a mile away from his home...

Concerns regarding official account

During the Hutton inquiry, a British ambassador called David Broucher reported a conversation with Dr Kelly at a Geneva meeting in February 2003, which he described as from "deep within the memory hole". Broucher related that Kelly said he had assured his Iraqi sources that there would be no war if they co-operated, and that a war would put him in an 'ambiguous' moral position. <6> Broucher had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded, and Kelly had replied, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods.' Broucher then quoted from an email he had sent just after Kelly's death: 'I did not think much of this at the time, taking it to be a hint that the Iraqis might try to take revenge against him, something that did not seem at all fanciful then. I now see that he may have been thinking on rather different lines.'

Archive of documents and transcripts relating to the Hutton inquiry into the apparent suicide of David Kelly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/documents/0,,1021218,00.html

See index of inquiry proceedings, day 8 (pm), page 18.


As for the (eventually five) doctors who contested the findings publicly: Wikipedia cont.

Although suicide was officially accepted as the cause of death, some medical experts have raised doubts, suggesting that the evidence does not back this up. The most detailed objection was provided in a letter from three medical doctors published in The Guardian <7>, reinforced by support from two other senior physicians in a later letter to the Guardian <8>. These doctors argued that the autopsy finding of a transected ulnar artery could not have caused a degree of blood loss that would kill someone, particularly when outside in the cold (where vasoconstriction would slow blood loss). Further, this conflicted with the minimal amount of blood found at the scene. They also contended that the amount of co-proxamol found was only about a third of what would normally be fatal. Dr Rouse, a British epidemiologist wrote to the BMJ pointing out that the act of committing suicide by severing wrist arteries is an extremely rare occurrence in a 59 year old man with no previous psychiatric history <9>. Nobody else died from that cause during the year.


Imbedded direct links to letters published by The Guardian are included in the WikPed article.

[yellowcanine]

25. But your first link actually supports suicide.....And your second link....

You say, "He predicted he would (be) killed during a walk in the woods...."
But what Broucher actually said on that leaves open the possiblility of a suicide prediction rather than a murder prediction.

First Link:

"Broucher had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded, and Kelly had replied, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods.' Broucher then quoted from an email he had sent just after Kelly's death: 'I did not think much of this at the time, taking it to be a hint that the Iraqis might try to take revenge against him, something that did not seem at all fanciful then. I now see that he may have been thinking on rather different lines."

Broucher actually concludes that Kelly committed suicide and that this explains his "dead in the woods" comments.

As for the doctors, as far as I could tell, they did not have access to the autopsy report, they appear to base their conclusions on news accounts. This is as laughable as Frist diagnosing Terry Schiavo from a videotape.

"These doctors argued that the autopsy finding of a transected ulnar artery could not have caused a degree of blood loss that would kill someone, particularly when outside in the cold (where vasoconstriction would slow blood loss)."

It was 3 pm in JULY - how cold could it have been?

Part of their conclusion is that the ambulance crew did not find much blood at the scene. Excuse me, he died in the woods. How can an ambulance crew know how much blood may have soaked into the ground over the period of time while he lay there?

I am perfectly willing to believe that Kelly was murdered and did not committ suicide. But there has to be evidence of murder. So far all we have is people disputing the possibility of suicide even though the only evidence available still points to suicide and there is NO actual evidence of murder other than speculation about the odds against suicide. People do die from slitting their wrists, no matter what those doctors might say or how rare it may be (in the case of the epidemiologist saying it was rare therefore it probably didn't happen. Excuse me but that is faulty logic. The odds are against winning the lottery but people do win it).

This whole exercise reminds me of the right wing conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Vince Foster, except this time it is the left promoting the conspiracies.

[crickets]

26. It's clear you've formed an opinion that isn't going to change.

Even if I wished to sway you one way or the other, there would be little point in the attempt. That in mind, I didn't even state my own opinion.

You say, "He predicted he would (be) killed during a walk in the woods...."

No, I didn't. I said: I remember reading about the comment as well, in reference to KCabotDullesMarxIII's comment above yours.

You asked for links and, along with selected quotes relating to the comments you questioned, I gave them to you. No more, no less.

My point was that the information is readily available and easy to find for anyone interested enough to look for it.

Your own point of view colored your predictions about whether my taste in headgear includes metallic substances. Surprise! Metaphorically speaking, I'm not wearing a hat at all.

Oh, and you're welcome for the links.

[yellowcanine]

27. Likewise I am sure.

Links schminks. Whatever. They don't back up the assertions being made so why should I be grateful for them? Lots of information is "readily available." The question is, how reliable is the information? In this case, not very, as I pointed out. Or maybe you think it was cold outside in Oxford at 3 pm in July of 2003? That is one of the reasons given by the dissenting doctors for why Kelly couldn't have bled to death. The dissenters, including the MP, need to put up some sound reasoning for a murder claim that is based on the actual autopsy report, not on newspaper accounts of the report and not on anecdotal evidence from paramedics untrained in forensic analysis. My opinion will change when that happens. Until then, no.

[CJCRANE]

14. Facinating.

Hollywood is going to be busy in about 10 or 20 years portraying all the "strange but true" things that happened in Iraq.

[yellowcanine]

18. Yes indeed but I fail to see the link to David Kelly. Any investigation of the death of Kelly

has to find a lot more than stories about WMD conspiracies to be convincing - it has to find actual evidence that Kelly was murdered.

[DemReadingDU]

16. morning kick

[scarletwoman]

23. k & r -- I never believed the suicide story, either.

Remember that quote from one of his last emails -- to Judith Miller, of all people -- before he died? Something about "dark actors playing dark games", if I recall correctly.

I really hope this MP is on to something...

sw