{"id":6849,"date":"2018-03-08T08:56:39","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T07:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6849"},"modified":"2018-03-08T13:07:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T12:07:45","slug":"who-did-their-job-and-who-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/6849\/","title":{"rendered":"Who did their job, and who didn’t?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via<\/a> MC in the comments, this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The security consultant who has worked for the company that compiled the\u00a0controversial dossier on Donald Trump\u00a0was close to the Russian double agent poisoned last weekend, it has been claimed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Give it a few days and we’ll start finding out this guy was tied in with Clintons, and the story will disappear in a puff of smoke with only conspiracy theorists mentioning his name ever again. With good reason: associates of the Clintons winding up dead is hardly newsworthy, is it? Might as well run a report every time it rains in Wales.<\/p>\n

Slightly more seriously, I’m going to buck the trend again. On the one hand I’m in agreement with some of my commenters: Britain should not allow Russian agents (assuming it was them) to go around murdering people willy-nilly with polonium and nerve gas on its soil. For starters, the possibility of collateral damage is great; the policeman who first handled the couple is critically ill in hospital, and this is appalling.<\/p>\n

But a spy being killed by the Russians? Okay, the chap worked for us so he’s on our side. But the Russians don’t see it that way, and understandably so. To them, he’s a filthy traitor. Did the information he passed on to the British result in any Russians being killed or imprisoned? It’s hard to imagine his treachery was harmless. So let’s flip this around. Would we be outraged if MI6 had arranged for Kim Philby or Guy Burgess to be knocked off in Moscow once they’d betrayed the west and fled to the Soviet Union? On the contrary, I’d consider it a duty of the British government to try.<\/p>\n

The outrage here isn’t really that Russia tried to kill a former spy. The outrage is that the British government let a former double agent wander around Salisbury oblivious to the fact someone still wanted him dead. I don’t think they even gave him a new identity, let alone a security detail. Who was in charge of this? Or is there a gentleman’s agreement that Russia has breached whereby spies who’ve been handed back in a swap are off-limits for retribution? Britain has a duty to protect those who cross over to work for them, as well as the public at large. This duty goes beyond expecting the Russians not to play dirty, and they’ve been negligent. How did someone even get a nerve agent into the country? Isn’t that a scenario they should be guarding against? Perhaps the security services should spend less time hounding British citizens for saying hurtful things on the internet and start doing the job they’re supposed to. We can be sure the Russians are doing theirs.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the Moscow Times<\/a> (H\/T Tim Johnson<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Skripal was not just any spy, though, but a\u00a0former insider, a\u00a0GRU officer who allegedly blew the cover of\u00a0some 300 Russian agents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s 300 suspects right there. It is quite possible this had nothing to do with the Russian government at all. Let’s just say that had Bowe Bergdahl<\/a> been Russian instead of American, he’d likely be found dead and the government with a clean pair of hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via MC in the comments, this: The security consultant who has worked for the company that compiled the\u00a0controversial dossier on Donald Trump\u00a0was close to the Russian double agent poisoned last weekend, it has been claimed. Give it a few days … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,15,42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6849"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6849"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6862,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6849\/revisions\/6862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}