POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES
You do not have to be "conspiracy-minded" to believe that Doctor Kelly did not kill himself.
The associate of Doctor Kelly’s, Mai Pederson a military interpreter, who recently revealed facts about his physical state – some injured part of his arm meant he could not wield a knife and made it impossible for him to cut his own wrist – is not a “conspiracy-minded.” She says he also had been advised quietly he was on a hit list. She also tells the story of the red laser site which appeared on his forehead on a walk together in Baghdad, something which made him take the threat seriously.
The relative of Doctor Kelly who said absolutely that that just was not his temperament is not a "conspiracy-minded."
The expert doctors who've said he could not have died the way it is said that he died are not "conspiracy-minded." The vessel cut could not even have bleed him to death.
The term "conspiracy theorist" often used instead of "conspiracy-minded" is actually one that, in my view, automatically marks out its user as dishonest.
It is a way to condemn all people who question the facts of something as borderline paranoids.
It truly is a term without meaning too, displaying for those who are careful of words its user’s lack of thinking.
We do, after all, have genuine conspiracies by governments with large interests. To say otherwise is to display ignorance.
This has always been true in history, but today the stakes are higher than ever in matters of international affairs for some countries.
It is, for example, open knowledge that Israel sends dozens of agents abroad in elaborate schemes to murder those deemed enemies.
And what of the years-long cover-up in Britain of the true events around Bloody Sunday?
What of the case, a few years ago, of a half-dozen American nuclear warheads being shipped across the country? Every outside expert says that the checks and balances make such an "accident" impossible?
What of the downing of the fourth hi-jacked plane on 9/11 over Pennsylvania? It was almost certainly shot down, likely on Cheney's orders, because multiple debris fields stretched for miles, something impossible in the kind of crash claimed.
What of Israel's attack on the USS Liberty, spy ship, during the Six Day War? When Israel finally got around to explaining it, it claimed an "accident"? A two-hour attack against a well-marked ship, one Israel had been advised would be on station and when the lead Israeli pilot made an initial low enough pass slowly to acknowledge crew members waves? Taking the ship out of commission cut off American information of the battle field and gave General Dayan the time to turn around his armor to complete the conquests of the Six Day War, the effort to secure Greater Israel, the results of which we suffer to this day.
What of Israel's nuclear weapons program? Years of intense, high-level deception.
What of South Africa's nuclear weapons program?
By the way, I wonder how many readers know that Doctor Kelly was one of the technical team assigned to take possession of South Africa's nuclear warheads when the apartheid regime ended? Doctor Kelly knew many damaging secrets.
