The last week or so have seen a number of interesting things come out of the Hutton investigation, pointing increasingly strongly towards the Government (in the broader sense) having dramatically exaggerated the available intelligence to support the drive to war. Let's take a look at some of the dramatis personae and what they considered to be the credibility of the evidence.

The saying is that the lie goes around the world before the truth gets its boots on. I think I'm seeing traces of bootpolish every day.

Sins of Commission

One of the changes Alasdair Campbell did make was to change the text of the dossier to reflect the stronger language of the executive summary, from Iraq may be able to deploy the weapons in 45 minutes to say that that its military are able to do so. My logic says that if there is a discrepancy between the text and its summary, you change the summary, not the text. To do otherwise is clearly to misrepresent your sources. So much for his claim that he had no involvement in the 45-minute claim. To say that he had no input, or output, or influence on them at any stage of the process we can charitably call a bald lie.

Tom Kelly, Blair's official spokesman, was also in little doubt that the intelligence didn't support the argument. An email from him to Campbell said The weakness, obviously, is our inability to say that he could pull the trigger any time soon, which is precisely the point. If you can't prove that case, your argument disappears entirely.

Not that there was much question about the weakness of the evidence. Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, was pretty clear about it on Sept 17th, the week before the dossier's publication:

[T]he document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam.

But compare that to Blair's foreword of the actual dossier:

I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current, that he has made progress on WMD and that he has to be stopped... [T]he document discloses that his military planning allows for some fo the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.

This sounds incredibly similar to Robin Cook's resignation statement.

Sins of Omission

John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, insisted on ownership of the September Dossier. His evidence shows that, while the 45 minute claim wasn't inserted into the dossier on the insistance of Number 10, it only referred to battlefield mortar shells or small-calibre weaponry.

This is hardly weapons of mass destruction, and in no way posed a threat to the UK. Except of course, for UK personnel in Iraq, appearing to be hostile forces. Or, to put it another way, there was no threat unless we invaded. Oh dear...

So the intelligence community seems to have put forward the claim of weapons in 45 minutes. Did Blair et al ask the followup question? What do you mean by weapons? All the published email traffic shows a desperate desire for credibility, so why not ask for the full story? The question is, which is worse? A Government prepared to cover up the fact that there was no credible argument for Iraq's possession of WMD, or one unable to do its diligence in the critical matter of going to war?

One of the emails says that Number 10 wanted the document to be as strong as possible within the bounds of available intelligence. It looks like those bounds were clearly exceeded.