Mick Smith - Times Online - WBLG

In Defence of Unnamed Sources

The sacking of a veteran CIA officer for having links with the press has added yet more worrying heat to an issue that I blogged on earlier this year. I was tempted to write on this at the weekend when the sacking was first reported but was concerned that there was insufficient evidence linking the sacked officer to the alleged offence. Mary McCarthy was alleged to have been the source for a story written by Dana Priest of the Washington Post on CIA secret prisons across Europe, an allegation she has now denied.

Sorry Donald You've Got To Go

$282bn! No come on, don’t say it so quickly. Give it the respect it deserves. Two hundred and eighty two billion dollars! That is the precise cost so far of the war in Iraq to America. Yes, the latest Congressional figures show that by the end of this fiscal year America will have spent $282bn – a sum that dwarves the measly $6.13bn we in the UK have spent - messing up a country that was no threat to America or the UK in any way, turning it into what are effectively three separate states with no government and no means of keeping the country secure and at the same time creating a terrorist theme park where all those Islamist terrorists who want to take their ludicrous and pathetic ire out on America can congregate.   

Another Small Crime in the State of Israel

I had some bad news over the weekend about someone who has been very dear to me for more than a decade now. It was just over ten years ago that I began researching the story of an astonishing man. Frank Foley was the MI6 Head of Station in Berlin during the 1930s. He witnessed the rise of Nazism in all its appalling forms and was horrified by the way in which the Jews were treated in Germany. Foley’s cover as Chief Passport Officer allowed him to circumvent the rules to help Jews get out Germany, very many of them to what was then known as Palestine.

Let's Hope Harry Does It Better

This blog has asked a lot of questions about the sort of officers the army produces recently, so as another lot came off the production line this week it was interesting to see the near universal applause. The British Army has produced some outstanding officers over the years and you don’t have to go back to Slim, as one of my correspondents did, to see them, but while I am sure there were a number of outstanding prospects at this week’s Sovereign’s Parade, and that young Cornet Wales was among them, it would not be a bad thing for them to log on to the Army Rumour Service web forum ARRSE and note the anger over the way that some soldiers have been treated by their officers in recent years. Anyone questioning the existence of such treatment need look no further than some of my previous posts, particularly It's Time to Get it Sorted and It Should Never Have Come To This.

Nigergate II: The Strange Case of the Burglar Who Didn’t Want Money

The revelations in today’s Sunday Times that two employees of the Niger embassy in Rome forged documents apparently proving Niger was selling uranium to Iraq are unlikely to end the conspiracy theories that swirl around the Niger Affair, and not just because the investigation into the Plamegate affair will run and run. There are still a number of minor mysteries that require further investigation, particularly two burglaries in Rome, one at the Niger embassy over the 2001 New Year’s holiday and one at the home of the Niger consul on January 31, 2001. Both break-ins baffled the Italian police, not least because the burglar didn’t seem to be interested in taking any money.

Nigergate I: The Truth Behind the Secrets and Lies

It has always been astonishing to me that there has been so much controversy over the claim by President George Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address that “the British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Regular readers of this blog will know that I am no friend of Bush and the fraudulent way in which he and Tony Blair took us to war. But as I have often said, and I am going to say again, those now infamous “16 words” were probably the only accurate comment on Iraqi WMD that the president made in the run-up to war.

Should The Armed Forces Have a Union?

I have been keeping my head down for a few days, taking a bit of time to answer a question put to me by one soldier following my recent blogs on the Deepcut and Biddiss situations. Fooboy asked me in response to my blog entitled “It should never have come to this” whether it would have been any different if there had been a British Armed Forces Federation and whether I thought that such an organisation should exist. Good question and one that as I say has caused me to pause for thought. I am not one of those who think it is a good idea for an army to have a union. In the heat of battle, orders need to be given and reacted to in an instant. There is no time to sit around and argue the toss. No time for a federation rep to come in and say well I’m sorry we don’t think it should be done that way. “Orders is orders,” they say, and for good reason. But there has been such a palpable failure of leadership within the army that – with a number of key riders - I have reluctantly changed my mind.