Deborama Tentatively Makes A Controversial Statement

I haven't been blogging the past day and a half, because I don't feel like commenting on what is almost the only news item going - the apparent suicide of Dr. David Kelly. What I said before is now more so, but this is the way the story unfolds, and it does not make any sense to me. Nothing quite adds up and it all just leaves me feeling very disheartened.

OK. I will say just this. If you have been reading my blog since it started in March, you will know that although I have been very critical of the conduct of the war in Iraq, I was not totally opposed to it; I am not a pacifist although I tend that way, and I do believe that a response and a remedy to terrorism is needed, though I disagree strongly with how the US in particular is pursuing this aim.

What you might not know about me, and this is very controversial I am sure, is that I do not in fact believe that the worst thing a leader in a democratic society can do is lie. There is a part of me, probably the same part of me that loves certain war movies and leads me to study military history, that really wanted to stand up and cheer when that Colonel played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men said "You can't handle the truth". Not that I was on his side in that actual instance, but I do think there are times when a leader has to be less than honest with the people, and it is certainly true that a large part of the American public and the British public as well cannot handle the truth, in the sense that they can't process it, can't understand, can't act sensibly on the basis of it. So, for these varied reasons, I feel very out of step with the whole "dodgy dossier" debate. Oh, don't get me wrong, I do think there is a moral flaw at the heart of New Labour, and I do despise the Machiavellian machinations that go on in day to day British politics, just as I despise the lazy cynicism that is at the heart of American national politics these days. But anyway, that's me, and I will probably say no more about dodgy dossiers, missing WMDs and mysterious deaths of government scientists (because it was mysterious, even if proven to be suicide).