The political ripple effects of the mysterious death of a British scientist are just now unfolding, writes Alistair Alexander from London Of the many thousands of casualties of the war on Iraq, it is tragically bizarre that the body found in the Oxfordshire countryside last week will almost certainly do more damage to Tony Blair -- and British politics -- than all the others put together. Dr David Kelly's suicide was a direct consequence of a nasty political struggle comprising the efforts of British MPs to hold the government to account over Iraq, and the government's ruthless determination to suppress the crisis at all costs. With a wretched inevitability, the blame game that led to Dr Kelly's death went into overdrive following it. The most obvious target of blame for the tragedy is the government itself. When Kelly admitted to his employers -- the Ministry of Defence -- that he was a source of the BBC report that the government had "sexed-up" its dossier on Iraq, he was clearly treated abysmally. Reports suggest Kelly was interrogated for at least four days, with threats of professional ruin, the loss of his pension and possibly a criminal conviction under the Official Secrets Act. For a highly respected scientist, this must have been humiliating degradation. But rather than sit on the information, as Kelly expected, the Ministry of Defence leaked Kelly's name to the media, apparently trying to force the BBC into naming the main source of its story, believing it was a second official. For Kelly, already profoundly distressed, being casually thrown into the vortex of press speculation must have been excruciating. By the time Kelly was served up by the government to the House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee, he was already a broken man. Recriminations are also directed at the Foreign Affairs Committee for its conduct. Even before Dr Kelly appeared before them, the committee's inquiry into intelligence on Iraq had degenerated into an unedifying spectacle of partisan politics, media manipulation and disinformation. Kelly's grilling by the committee resembled a Soviet show trial rather than a serious pursuit of the truth. Speaking so softly that the air conditioning had to be turned off to hear him, Kelly was subjected to a barrage of hostile questioning. "You've been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like the fall guy?" one MP taunted, mistakenly believing that Kelly was not actually the main source of the BBC report. The MPs' treatment of Kelly jarred glaringly with the deference they afforded to Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, who used his appearance before them to launch a ferocious attack on the BBC for having the temerity to question the government's integrity. The BBC is now under renewed scrutiny for its conduct in the affair, having admitted, following his death, that Kelly was the main source for the original story after all. The government and its supporters claim that if the BBC had named Kelly as its source much earlier, they would have lifted much of the pressure he was under and Kelly might still be alive. This argument is absolute nonsense, of course; being named by the BBC would have been just as bad as being named -- as Kelly was -- by the Ministry of Defence. Besides, the BBC would have lost all credibility if it had violated journalistic standards and capitulated to government intimidation to reveal the source's identity. Of greater concern for the BBC, its reporter Andrew Gilligan's version of events differs from that which Kelly gave to the Foreign Affairs Committee before he died. Kelly told the committee he did not think he was Gilligan's main source, and that he did not recognise many of Gilligan's source's allegations. This would suggest that Kelly was being less than honest in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which might help explain his extreme discomfort. But inconsistencies have emerged in Gilligan's account also, which the Blair administration is exploiting with renewed vigour. It is a measure of Tony Blair's isolation that the day before Kelly's suicide, he had regarded his address to the US Congress as an unmitigated triumph. Blair was greeted with 17 standing ovations from US lawmakers. At home, however, Blair's speech -- in which he declared that history will forgive him even if weapons of mass destruction are not found -- was greeted with disillusioned scepticism. As news of Kelly's death reached his plane en route to Asia, the prime minister was swiftly brought back down to earth. When he landed he was visibly shell-shocked and promptly announced a judicial inquiry into Kelly's death. Of course, amidst all the government's accusation against the BBC and the aftermath of Kelly's suicide, the actual substance of his allegations have long been forgotten; the government's defence has succeeded, albeit at a terrible price. Whether Campbell did insert the claim that Iraq had WMDs that could be deployed in 45 minutes remains unproven. What is known, as a White House official confirmed to the US press last week, is that the British government's 45-minute claim was patently false. It is a shocking indictment of British politics that the government has so comprehensively diverted attention away from the central issue: that it went to war on a false premise. The British political system -- with no significant second chamber, no separation of powers and no written constitution -- is completely reliant on the House of Commons to be the watchdog. The dismal performance of the Foreign Affairs Committee starkly reveals that it is incapable of doing so. If the committee was as independent as it claimed, it would have never been so easily distracted from the central issue of the government's integrity. This would have ensured that the scrutiny brought to bear on Dr David Kelly would instead have been directed far more usefully -- and less cruelly -- at the government itself. The government's total domination of Westminster politics ensures that the truth will never emerge while it remains in power. Despite its credibility being in tatters, there appears to be no mechanism available to ensure accountability. This is a crisis of parliamentary democracy, the scale of which is just starting to become painfully clear. As for a hapless Tony Blair, his fortunes are beginning to resemble those of an interminable Greek tragedy, cast as the doomed anti-hero desperately striving for redemption as ever greater disasters surround him. Two weeks ago Clare Short -- who resigned from the cabinet in protest over Iraq -- called on the already beleaguered prime minister to resign before things got "even nastier", meeting with predictable derision from government ministers. Following the death of Dr David Kelly, Short's words appear to have had a terrible prescience not even she could have imagined.
