Nice to see that the Government has its priorities right:

If that’s not an Ass, I’m a horse

a gentle and respected friend got 28 days in chink for digging graves as an anti-war protest, and was therefore one of the 271 extra prisoners on Monday who took the prison population through the 80,000 ceiling...

So, a man who was due a six month sentence for downloading child porn (a crime, we are constantly being reminded, involving the actual abuse of actual children) is set free pending good behaviour. Another whose ‘crime’ is to protest against an illegal war - with particular regard to the killing of innocent children (the protest was on the feast of the holy innocents) goes down at huge cost to the taxpayer.

John Reid’s guidelines that were in the news yesterday were not new - they have been in place for quite some time. Reid’s letter was simply a reminder of a policy which was firmly in place on Monday - prison should be reserved for ’serious, repeat and violent offenders’.

[InMyHumbleEtc]

Who knows what kind of threat this serious offence might pose? Next they'll be serving Fairly Traded Tea, and then where would we be?

The Kay Report, delivered along with Kay's resignation, concludes that there were no WMD worth talking about in Iraq since the first Gulf War.

Seems like the MinTruth troops have been at it again. In the aftermath of GulfWarI, Bush Senior and his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote an essay for Time magazine, explaining why an attempt to invade Iraq and topple Saddam was pretty much dismissed out of hand.

For some reason, the Time archives no longer carry this essay, and it has been erased from that edition's Table of Contents.

If you want to read the germane section, click the 'Read More' link below. Thanks to The Memory Hole for spotting it - they've got the full missing essay plus a scan of the original paper copy.

Today's Iraq Survey Group Report to the US Senate and Congress joint Intelligence Committee is expected to reveal that while Saddam didn't actually have any WMDs, he may have been pretending to have some, for the purposes of getting us to invade and depose him, kill his sons etc.

Well that's alright then, no harm done. As long as you don't mind unjustified wars, believing the misinformation of dictators and so on.

From the BBC report:

Committee chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican, said he was increasingly uncertain about Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs.

At one point I'm sure they did. Where they are now and what point they are now, I just don't know.

Of course he used to have them - in the late 1980s. After the US and UK sold them to him.

As previously anticipated, the Government's entire rhetoric on the justification for the Iraq war is now based on regime change.

I've just been listening to Blair on Radio 4's Today programme, being asked whether, given the lack of WMD, he thought the war was still justified.

Blair's argument was entirely based on The people of Basra are grateful to be rid of Saddam. Which is all very well, except for the minor point that it was then, and is now, illegal to force regime change.

One could also add that the people of Iraq are also mustard keen to get the foreign troops out of the country so they can run the place themselves, but that would be mere quibbling.

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.