Craig Murray Reviews the UK Government's Account of the Skipal Poisonings and Finds It Largely Absurd and Obviously False

Craig Murray, dissident former UK Ambassador, titles his latest review of the Skipal poisonings:

Pure: Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative 

Why he uses the word pure, I'm not sure, but as I recall from a history of the Victorian era, a means whereby poor city dwellers might earn a living was to collect dog shit, which they could sell for a shilling a bucket to tanneries, where it was used it to cure skins being made into leather. This useful commodity was known in the trade as pure. My assumption, therefore, is that Murray's use of the word pure indicates his view of the composition of the "official Skripal narrative."

In any case, Murray's provides a well informed examination of ten significant aspects of what he describes as a dark business. 

Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account.

Murray's review is both informative, and  in a macabre way, amusing. 

The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!

Of particular interest are points considered rarely if at all by other commentators, Murray, for example,  points out the suggestive connections that Sergei Skripal had with the BBC, the British foreign intelligence service, MI6, and the creators of the anti-Trump Russian dossier.

In conclusion, Murray states:

I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences. What I do know is that major planks of the UK government narrative simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Plainly the Russian authorities have lied about the identity of Borishov and Petrov. What is astonishing is the alacrity with which the MSM and the political elite have rallied around the childish logical fallacy that because the Russian Government has lied, therefore the British Government must be telling the truth. It is abundantly plain to me that both governments are lying, and the spy games being played out that day were very much more complicated than a pointless revenge attack on the Skripals.