New Government Rules

Tony Blair's government has announced that it will tighten up the procedures governing the use of intelligence after they were basically found to have (mis)used it to lead us into an illegal war (but of course they didn't ever, ever sex it up, oh no). This is supposed to reassure the British electorate before an election but if you are have an ounce of cynicism (and if you dodn't you wouldn't be reading this!) you may well think the only procedures the government will implement will be to make sure they don't get found out again so easily and to make sure the BBC will take the fall again if they do. Oh dear, I'm talking my way into an intern camp for terrorists...

Elsewhere that same BBC the Blair government tried to smear to save their own amoral asses announced that the former deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, warned that the Iraq war was a "crime of aggression" when she resigned because she felt the war was illegal. Channel 4 News also claimed that a piece of the letter that was witheld proved that the attorney general changed his mind on the legality of the war (the British people, of course, still are not being trusted by Blair with the publication of that legal advice in full - why not? Nothing to hide, surely?). People need to remember all of this in the run-up to the general election.