Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Diplomats' letter

Last night on BBC's Newsnight, the lead item was a letter from former US diplomats to President Bush that was intended as a mirror to the one Tony Blair received yesterday from former British diplomats.

After allowing Washington correspondent Tom Carver make as big a deal out of this letter as he could, Mr. Paxman then played his taped interview with one of the letter's signers, Andrew Killgore. Mr. Killgore was Ambassador to Iraq in the 60s and to Qatar in the late 70's. He is the publisher of the Washington Report on Mideast Affairs.

The interview told me that (a) Mr. Killgore is against the Iraq war and (b) opposed to US policy with regards to Israel. Whoa!

After seeing this interview with Mr. Killgore, my response was, "Is that it?". So far I haven't been able to find any reference to this letter on any US news web site. Now, I haven't killed myself looking, but it's not a leading item anywhere and it doesn't even seem to have made it into the NY Times, the Washington Post or onto CNN.

I wonder if anyone in the Newsnight team is feeling a little sheepish about this big exposé 12(+) hours later?