Tragedy

I've only been following the David Kelly case casually, leaving it to more capable hands to ingest the gritty details of this tragedy. Mary, over on the Left Coaster, sums up some of what we have learned in the two weeks since the Hutton inquiry began. Specifically, we have learned that Kelly's depression, which may have lead to his suicide, was probably not brought on by his having been exposed as the source of the "sexed up" charge. Kelly was depressed for months before because he felt he had betrayed the confidence of contacts in Iraq in the run up to the war. He was skeptical about the need for war and he urged some of those contacts to come forward (possibly risking their lives) as part of the initial inquiry. But the process was so skewed towards justifying the war that Blair's government just wasn't interested in hearing contrary evidence. Kelly may have felt that he put his friends in a dangerous position by urging them to come forward and all for naught. This would explain a lot about why Mr. Kelly may have decided to kill himself. Many of us were depressed in the lead up to the war and that depression just grew worse as the war became a reality. But imagine the feelings of a man as intimately involved in the process as David Kelly who fought to stop the train before it went over the cliff yet all of his efforts were for naught. And then, after he talks with a BBC reporter about his frustrations, the government leaks Kelly's name as the source of the accusation and Kelly's life becomes a living hell. As I said, what a tragedy.