The death of Dr Kelly - the MOD advisor - is causing a lot of trouble for the Labour government.
Rather than go over the pros and cons of the Iraq war, I will address the idea of responsibility for his identification to the media.
This was Alan Clark's famous statement, when accused of lying.
If found guilty of "lying" he would have been in real trouble.
But this is nonsense.
The intent behind a lie, is to deceive, so the idea that using some other method of deception is not so bad is crazy.
Tony Blair was incensed when accused of releasing the identification of Dr Kelly.
It apparently is a quite different thing to "confirm his identity" after leaving a trail of clues to be followed.
What a pile of tosh!
The clear intent was to enable the identification of Dr Kelly. To argue over the method of identification is just pathetic.
Another issue raised is that Dr Kelly was not a "senior" official.
This may well be true, specifically noting his own apparent dissatisfaction with his own status.
But, that does not mean that he was not the most expert. Indeed the evidence is that he was - in the field of biological weapons.
In any business/organisation, it is highly unlikely that the most senior people are the most knowledgable. In many situations problems are often caused because the "senior" people do not involve those with the most knowledge.