UK seals documents about suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly for 70 years

Governments can and do operate clandestinely, the only real question is how much.

David Kelly's death came at a very good time for the British Government, he had already proven to be willing to go public with potentially very damning information.

My take on it was that he would have continued to make plain his findings until either the British participation in the Iraq war would have become untenable or there would have been a government crisis.

The interesting part is that after all the dust settled it all seemed to boil down to the exact definition of what it means when a report is 'sexed up', as vague a term as you could want to have for that purpose.

Apparently 'selecting evidence that is convenient whilst leaving out that which is inconvenient' is not enough.

70 years is nothing - there are still cabinet meetings from the Napoleonic wars that are sealed.

That is exactly the key.

The fact that a government can put itself above any sort of public inquiry for 70 years is completely counter to what any respectable democracy should stand for.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need Wikileaks.

In the world we have, Wikileaks is a valuable resource.

Correct. I pay Wikileaks to be explicitly unethical, for that very reason.

It's like someone said elsewhere in the thread: if governments have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear, right?

So an editor had to have killed it and another had to restore it. Weird. I can see why though, it is a purely political piece.

Either that or I'm seeing things :)