Slander by proxy

It looks like Winston Peters' latest allegations of Baathists living in New Zealand may be a case of slander by proxy. At a public meeting in Auckland yesterday, two of the men he had accused under Parliamentary privilege of being apparatchiks and secret police in Saddam's regime vigorously denied the allegations - and suggested that a third man, who both had been involved in litigation with, was passing on false information to Winston as a way of getting revenge. Winston of course has refused to comment, but it really does make you wonder how much checking he does before smearing someone in Parliament - and whether he'll stop now that this inconvenient fact has been revealed.