We haven't been tracking here all the shrill rhetoric over "the 16 words" in the State of the Union address.
But this is eerie.
British police found a body on Friday matching that of a mild-mannered scientist who disappeared after becoming unwittingly embroiled in a furious political dispute about the Iraq war.
The softly spoken 59-year-old had been thrust into the limelight by a row over whether the British government hyped the threat from Iraq in order to justify joining the U.S.-led war.
Kelly, a microbiologist at the Defence Ministry who had worked for U.N. inspectors in Iraq, had been grilled by parliamentarians on Tuesday after admitting he spoke to a reporter for Britain's BBC radio.
The reporter, Andrew Gilligan, said in May a senior intelligence source had told him the government ''sexed up'' data to emphasise the threat from Iraq.
Kelly's discomfort in the spotlight was evident from his demeanour at the foreign affairs committee hearing.
Speaking so softly he could barely be heard, he admitted he had met Gilligan but denied telling him Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell had ordered intelligence on suspected Iraqi banned weapons to be hyped.
Whether he told the reporter the report wash hyped we will probably never know.
But notice that only after testifying before the foreign affairs committee and denying he said it was hyped did he wind up missing and dead.
Does someone want PM Blair and President Bush to hang so badly they were willing to kill the witness before he could validate the report was real?
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