Wednesday, December 14, 2005
There's something that annoys me about the events that occured in New York on the 11th of September 2001 being referred to in the British media as '9-11', but even worse is the slide towards '7-7' for our own terrorist attacks earlier this year. Whilst the former is understandable as it's how the U.S. have come to know the event, it's both ridiculous to do the same to our attack (thankfully it was on a palindromic day or else think of the confusion!) and insulting as the two events are on nowhere near the same scale.
Anyway, it appears we get to look forward to a report, they are being very careful not to call it a 'dossier', written by a senior civil servant telling us what happened on the 7th of July. We are getting this instead of a public enquiry, which some of the relatives and/or victims of the attack that day want but which the Government is resisting. And, at the moment, I agree. At the moment the fact that the intelligence services had just lowered the threat level assessment or that one of the bombers had been under surveillance in the past does not signal a government-wide cock-up on the scale of the U.S. Government prior to September 2001. However, what with the 'dodgy dossier', the Hutton whitewash, the Butler review, can we have any confidence that anything our Government chooses to tell us is accurate?
Anyway, it appears we get to look forward to a report, they are being very careful not to call it a 'dossier', written by a senior civil servant telling us what happened on the 7th of July. We are getting this instead of a public enquiry, which some of the relatives and/or victims of the attack that day want but which the Government is resisting. And, at the moment, I agree. At the moment the fact that the intelligence services had just lowered the threat level assessment or that one of the bombers had been under surveillance in the past does not signal a government-wide cock-up on the scale of the U.S. Government prior to September 2001. However, what with the 'dodgy dossier', the Hutton whitewash, the Butler review, can we have any confidence that anything our Government chooses to tell us is accurate?
