If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Are we sure we have jailed the right people here?
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2076477,00.htmlA civil servant and an MP's researcher were today jailed for leaking a secret memo about a meeting on Iraq between Tony Blair and George Bush.
David Keogh, 50, who worked in Whitehall's communications centre, was jailed for six months at the Old Bailey for breaching the Official Secrets Act.
The researcher to whom he gave the memo, Leo O'Connor, was jailed for three months on a similar charge for passing the document to his employer, the anti-war Labour MP for Northampton South, Anthony Clarke.
The four-page memo recorded April 2004 Oval Office talks between the two leaders on events in the city of Falluja. Its contents were so secret that much of the trial was held behind closed doors with the press and public excluded. [...]
Keogh was said to have described the contents as "abhorrent" and "illegal". According to O'Connor's statements to police, Keogh believed the memo exposed the US president as a "madman". [...]
The prosecution admitted the leak did not contain any "actual damage", though it could have put British lives at risk.
What a wonderful world we live in eh? One in which two statesmen break international law, illegally attack and invade other nations causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and yet remain unaccountable for their crimes while the people who try to leak the details of their abhorrent actions to the public are jailed for their troubles.
You have to laugh, really... :rolleyes:
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
0
Comments
Oh, and the war wasnt illegal - not in any meaningful way anyway.
As for the legality of the war, the way I understand it it was illegal even before it became clear the world had been misled and lied to regarding WMDs and links to terrorism. After it became clear the US and Britain had misled and lied to the entire world, the war is as illegal as it can get: namely an unprovoked and completely unjustified attack on a sovereign nation that has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and made the lives of millions more a living hell of indescribable proportions.
You think, but you dont know - it could really have anything in it. Having said that though I'd agree with you that some fairly nasty things have been said and done.
What specific law? Where? And far more importantly who is going to do anything about it? I said the war isnt illegal in any 'meaningful way' for a good reason, in that its gone ahead and no one is going to do anything about it. Even if you can point to a specific law it means nothing.
Am I correct to say then that it is impossible for a head of state to do anything illegal so long as he claims to do it in the interests of his country?
If we can send Milosevic to The Hague for war crimes, then sure as hell we can send Blair and Bush. From the legal point of view at least, I know it would never happen in practice.
Of course it didnt stop them using it as an excuse, international law has always been for the West to use rather than abide by.
I am inclined to agree with you, given the stipulations Blair made before the war it certainly has a dodgy legal footing (the legal case for the war seems to be one side of A4 knocked up at the last minute). But thats not the point - it being 'illegal' doesnt get anyone anywhere - nothing will come of it so its a moot point.
And also from these two chaps' point of view, who must be thinking they broke the law for a good cause and got jailed for it while the people they were blowing the whistle on did far worse acts and they won't even face trial.
Moral point? Yeah I suppose so, I've given up getting angry when governments do unethical things it wasnt good for my heart.
No, of course not!
why? they broke the law
You think they deserve jail for that?
What about the people the memo referred to?
Morally they should have been shot. We used to call it treason. Now it seems that putting the lives of British soldiers at risk is defensible.
Done ? Certainly. Many people murdered. The alleged use of white phosphorus (admitted) and napalm (denied). ( And don`t you love the name : Operation Vigilant Resolve)
Said ? Speculation of more attempted murder (that "good old Tony" managed to avert !) that appears to be true if the reaction of those feeling threatened is anything to go by.
Interesting that Blair threatened to jail any editor who printed the contents back in 2004.
Is that a subtle difference to Bush who (allegedly) wanted to bomb the news editors who were reporting things that he felt threatened by ?
D-notices are as powerful a weapon as "The Official Secrets Act" when parasitical tyrants/politicians( delete as appropriate) feel threatened by the truth. ( The one from this weekend managed to suppress an amusing story about BP executives and John Reid).
"National Security" indeed
And in any case, I think it's one of the most morally wrong things you can do, no matter who you are, to hide something from people it concerns.
Maybe the war shouldn’t have happened, i personal think it was needed, but anyways i thought this thread was about what the civil servant and the MP's researcher has done, which was wrong, people in that position have no right to decide as and when they fancy keeping to the Official Secrets Act.
I think they should have gone down for longer
If that constitutes treason, what do you call actually causing the deaths of hundreds of British soldiers for no valid reason and under false pretenses? And what should we do to the man who did it?
How long should Blair go down for?
see, you just cant admit that those two guys where wrong, and does this really have to be turned into an iraq thread again?
Because what these guys were doing was trying to unmask wrongdoing by a pair of blood-soaked lying warmongers.
And because their actions should be seen as whistleblowing, not "treason".
Imagine the following hypothetical situation: instead of covering certain actions commited during the war on Iraq, which some people might actually see as legitimate, the leaked document was a transcription of a private conversation between Bush and Blair in which they both said how they enjoyed travelling to Asia and having sex with minors.
Would you still believe the civil servants should have adhered to the Official Secrets Act law if that had been the case, or would you have defended their leaking of the document?
Ooops that's what happened.
i believe that no man has no right to brake the Official Secrets Act, and that they are being punished for it, nothing more nothing less,
they shouldn’t get any these of a punishment because of what the document contained,
Bloody hell! Can I be Prime Minister? Sounds like the perfect job!
I think allowing anyone to break the Official Secrets Act and not being punished sets a bad example.
it would lead to anyone that brakes it using the excuses that they thought it was in the publics interest,
I find the principle of a government being able to do anything it wants and then be protected from disclosure by a piece of legislation under the vague and completely subjective claims of 'national security', no matter how serious the actions might have been, deeply fucking disturbing and at odds with the principle of accountable governments and democracies.
That is a lot more serious and a far more dangerous slippery slope towards an Orwellian state than ID cards or CCTV cameras could ever be, for instance. I would have expected anyone who is uncomfortable with those two would be far more worried about the government having immunity against wrongdoing by claiming even talking about it would be against the 'national interest'.
but what was in the document cant be used in a court,
Their job?
Determine "no good reason whatsoever"...
Yes these men should have been sent down, the law is there and they broke it. Knowingly broke it. Whether Blair should go for war crimes is irrelevant in this regard.