Pligget

Pligget
Little to say for myself

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Let me see that job description again....

Does it occur to anyone else as strange that the Prime Minister's Press Secretary (I'm sorry - Director of Communications) should have anything to do with material that the PM presents to The House of Commons in a debate? Let alone material that is supposed to be expert MoD intelligence (ahem) about the threat of a foreign regime to national security?

What business is it of Alistair Campbell's to have an input to the debate? Aren't debates (especially ones concerning the commitment of troops to conflict) part of the Parliamentary process, rather than part of the relationship between the Government and the Press? Isn't it Campbell's job simply to handle how the debate is reported (i.e. the output of the debate) from the Government's viewpoint?

Surely the issue under investigation should be broader than simply whether or not Campbell doctored the intelligence material, but what in blue blazes he was doing having access to it in the first place.

posted by Plig | 14:42 |

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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
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Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
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I think it would be a good idea
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