Wednesday 12 November 2008

Obsession

The trouble is, once an obsession grips, it is very hard to focus on anything else. However, progress is being made, with many additions, especially here.

By the time the project is finished – if ever – it will be the first time the whole story has been anything like told, in one place. Hitherto, we told bits in over seventy different posts – plus more elsewhere – which make it very difficult to pick up the threads and get the complete picture of one of the murkiest tales of our time.

Nor is this an idle or academic exercise. Already, there have been calls for a public inquiry into this whole affair, of which we will hear more shortly, and at least two of the bereaved families are planning to sue the MoD for negligence. Thus, we thought it important to get all the issues into the public domain.

This may not have the immediacy of the hyst̩rie du jour or the easy attraction of the political theatre in which it would be so easy to indulge, but, as we intimated in one of yesterday's posts, this is real politics Рthe long, hard, undramatic slog that gets results.

And, if you want to know why we're doing it – if you needed to ask – this and the picture - brutal in its impact - gives the answer.

That is what politics does, when it goes wrong. That is the reality, a million miles away from the vacuous theatre of the House of Commons, and the "punch and judy" of PMQs which we will see today. But that's where this started. And that's where it must finish. Those responsible must be held to account.

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