5th October, 2001

Dear Mr Younger-Ross,

I have phoned your office three times urging that Parliament be recalled quickly and permanently. On the last occasion (Monday 1st October) I spoke for the second time to Miss Becky Howard, your secretary. I told her that this government had steadily eroded the power of our Parliament and the failure to recall it properly is the last straw. I said that I had never felt so powerless and disenfranchised.

She replied, and of course I paraphrase ...

I approach my analysis of this both as a doctor and an orthopaedic surgeon. I am helped in having been trained at St Mary’s with young people from other countries and having had many young doctors helping me in the beleaguered NHS who came here to train from all parts of the world including the Middle East and Afghanistan. I know the reality of death and torn bodies from dealing at first hand with the casualties of the dominant motor vehicle. My training and mentality help me get to the nub of a problem. Even-handedness drives me to write this piece.

It may be fruitful to treat terrorism as we do a disease process:

06/06/04 "ICH" -- Ms Montague interviewed David Kay on the BBC Today programme yesterday.

He served as IAEA/UNSCOM Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector in Iraq following the Gulf War. From June 2003 he was appointed by President Bush to head the 1,400 man Iraq Survey Group. He resigned that position in January 2004 having concluded that there had been no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the war. He is now Senior Research Fellow at the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies - a major body in the constellation of Washington 'think-tanks'. He is concentrating on counter-terrorism and weapons proliferation in a section which is also working on the enhancement of 'blast weapons'. He has appeared before three senate committees dealing with intelligence failures etc.

Ms M was quizzing him about the resignation of CIA head George Tenet and his deputy. Kay said that the intelligence services had under performed since the end of the cold war and he could see the logic of Bush clearing the decks before the election. And what of the hunt in Iraq for WMD - was it a waste of time? It was not of the highest priority and likely to be any bit of use said Kay. Ms M said that Blair still speaks of unmasking WMDs in Iraq. This is delusional said Kay, 'there is nothing there' but 'there were programmes'.

The German word for suicide is more direct than the English: Selbstmord - self-murder.

Did Dr David Kelly - husband, father of three daughters and a leading world expert in chemical and germ warfare - murder himself, or was he murdered by others?

When his violent death was first reported I felt he was likely a victim of a wicked system that had used him and spat him out. I was very sceptical that he could have bled to death from one cut wrist.

At first, the media spoke of 'alleged suicide', but by last November I became aware that reporters were speaking of Dr Kelly's 'suicide' without qualification. Objecting to this, on 15 December I wrote a letter to the Morning Star - key extracts follow: