Melanie,

I don't know what to make of this diary entry...are you suggesting we should all swallow what we are told without questioning it? Are you suggesting that it is wrong to read the evidence in a report (ie the Hutton Report) and to state - when we see the conclusions - that they don't correspond with that evidence? Have a look at William Rees-Mogg's article in The Times today. He has roundly criticized Lord H's conclusions as not having taken properly into account the distortions to truth that are inevitable in a propaganda war - particularly one that involves such a critical decision about whether or not to go to war.

I'd like Peter Preston & his ilk, along with the General Secretary of BALPA to be held on standby to travel on suspect flights in place of the passengers who decide a few hours inconvenience is better than being vaporised.(Assuming Preston & co can insure the plane).

Do not understand what you have written Melanie, but suspect that makes two of us.

We had no HUMINT on Iraq once the team was withdrawn so Clinton could rocket attack Baghdad; and relied on SIGINT. The over-reliance on US style electronic intelligence has caught us when we deal with people who do not run their system on a US template.......had SIS kept the stations running that George Young had charge of in the 1950s we might not be in quite such a mess.

Remember Anthony Eden who did speak fluent Arabic, was a skilled diplomat, did put his telescope to his blind eye when SIS information did not meet with his pre-defined plan.

SIS also lost its entire networks in Europe in 1940 after the Venlo Incident and had no real Intelligence network in Germany; and HMG had blown off the conspirators who wanted to topple Hitler over Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Such is the human condition.

I do wish Melanie would calm down a bit. Posts like this and the "Weimar Britain" one really are over the top.

Like most other people when I first read the conclusions of the Hutton report I was aghast and disappointed. However, I now think I understand why Hutton reached the conclusions he did, and more importantly why Blair was always optmistic he would be exonerated.

Hutton is a senior judge, and as such has spent all his life in court where you judge people innocent until proven otherwise, and secondly do not allow past behavioural patterns (or 'form') to influence your verdict. On this basis, Hutton could only find the parties guilty where there was clear factual evidence of guilt. Thats is:-

1) the BBC were wrong about the insertion of the 45 minute claim.
2) They did not check the story, but stood by Gilligan and dug in their heels.
3) the MOD did not follow proper procedures in the exposure of Huttons name to the press.

All of which his lordship did, though I don't understand why Hutton wasnt more critical of the morally squalid '20 questions' way Dr Kelly's name was leaked.

What he could not do is to find Blair and co. guilty of sordid or sinister motivations regarding areas of their conduct (such as changes to the dossier approved by the head of the JIC at Campbell's request) where the evidence to 'convict' on these grounds simply isn't strong enough.

Blair is a lawyer by training and would have known all this when he ordered the enquiry. Also a highly cunning politician, many of the relevant meetings were of course left un-minuted, or perhaps took place strictly off the record. If foul-play did exist in his and his cohorts actions (and I believe it did) there was no written evidence to support it.

Now, lets deal with the public perception. The fact is that we in the court of public opinion are not bound by the rigours of the law and can play a much looser game. Our judgements of Blair, Campbell and Co are very much based on previous patterns of their behaviour. Nowadays most of us wouldnt believe Blair if he told us the sky was blue.

This reminds me of Mathew Parris's metaphor (the insightful one I have ever read about politics) about the perception of a government's morality by the public being akin to tipping gravel into a swamp: for a long time huge amounts of gravel may be tipped, but nothing seems to happen - then one day the gravel breaks the surface, and stays above it. So it is with governemnt sleaze: for a long time the public took no notice of the many scandals with have afflicted this government: - Formula 1, Mandelson's home loan, cash for passports, Jo Moore, Cheriegate, etc, etc, etc. However, WMD was the final straw: Blair has now lost all benefit of the doubt, and whereas before he remained popular and above suspicion, now he is unpopular and stands guilty as charged by the public, even if that charge cannot be proved and no matter whether he actually is or not.

This may not be an edifying part of human behaviour but it is exactly as we behave as humans when we are let down continually by someone we once trusted or loved. Most of us in our lives at one time or another have been conned and deceived by lovers, friends or in business. For a long time we give that person the benefit of the doubt over signals of bad behaviour. Then one day they do something which tips the balance and all our anger at having been betrayed comes flooding out. Our reaction is not past merely on the immediate offence, which may be very minor, but on all the past transgressions that person has committed as well.

That is why Melanie is wrong to worry so much about the public's lack of balance or emotionalism on WMD - what the public is really reacting to is entire Blair's past record....the concern and anger over WMD may be real enough to a degree but we stand in judgement on him over all his past. From now onwards, I predict with total certainty that whatever he does now on virtually any subject he will be accused and found guilty by the public of cynical and low behaviour. His position is now analagous to the wretched John majors after the ERM, which has a certain poetic justice given the way new Labour spun the extent of Tory sleaze in the 1990s to suit their own ends.

I look forward very much to his forthcoming and inevitable political demise. He has only himself to blame.

Politicians generally have to be honest about their views and policies if they wish to build up public support. Even Hitler, when he wrote Mein Kampf, stated openly that he planned to expand Germany Eastwards by force; it would be self-defeating to encourage public support for the League of Nations while planning to invade Poland.
Yet we are saddled with journalists who ask themselves "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" whenever they interview a politician, whose cynicism is corroding British politics.
We are now, it seems, expected to believe that Blair, Campbell et al. decided on:
1. War with Iraq for some unmentionable reason.
2. Fabrication of WMD stories to scare the public and drum up support.
3. A campaign against the BBC when the WMD failed to appear.
No wonder Melanie has "lost it".

Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf - expanding eastwards is hardly revelationary. It is on the same scale as a British party wishing to be at the "heart of Europe"

Hitler wanted back the land of the Teutonic Knights; and to recover the territory lost at Versailles.......ALL German Governments since 1918 were committed to this goal which is why they started secret rearmament with the USSR after 1920 - after the Poles had thrashed the Red Army outside Warsaw.

Read up on General von Seeckt......Hitler merely stated the obvious and it was so mainstream as to be ignored.

David,

If we were off to war it was the government's role to inform us on the war, and also the BBC's. I expect there to be some degree of propaganda warfare but to extend that right to the BBC is absurd. Had the BBC been objective in the first place, from 9/11 or earlier, it would have been in a position to question the particular wording of and background to the dossier. However not for the first time the BBC pounced and ran with the allegation of lies, and sooner or later was time to bring them to rights. They are still doing it now. Governments should be introspective, yes. So should the media, and particularly the BBC with it's steep annual fee. I would not retract this view just to save a public institution. That is Saddam-style politics. And the BBC won't fix themselves by blocking their ears.

The BBC, top management included, made a very serious allegation, that the PM and hence the collective cabinet, deliberately and knowingly misled parliament and the people, and went to war in Iraq, by falsifying intelligence data. If Hutton had shown that this had been true, then the PM and the cabinet would have had no alternative but to resign collectively. In fact the PM would have had to ask the Queen to dissolve parliament. This would have caused a serious crisis in the UK, of the same magnitude as that of Suez.

It sures seems that the BBC had a political agenda to destroy PM Blair.

No DP you are wrong. The Prime Minister, Defence Secretary and the Propaganda 'Minister' Campbell would be gone, but no Dissolution would have been granted because the Goernment commands such a large majority in Parliament.

It is for this reason that the Conservative Government survived until 1963 but merely replaced its discredited leader as Prime Minister.

Romulus, I'm afraid you are under the impression that had Hutton disclosed serious wrong doing on the part of the PM, the damage would have been confined. To make a comparson of events in 1963 to the present day, takes no account of the information revolution that has taken place since then.
The seriousness of the BBC charge would have had a momentum of its own and there is no telling what would have transpired.
The BBC, probabaly inadvertantly, had primed a WMD of its own against the Blair government.

The title of this article is an apt description of much of what Melanie Phillips writes. She seems to be a "rent a provocative opinion on any subject you care to name". Absence of intelligence or insight or expertise and sadly, very often, absence of any attempt to be honest in making her case.

DP what events in 1963 do you refer to ?

I merely pointed out that Eden was pushed by Macmillan who had encouraged him into Suez, then his old wartime buddy Ike together with Dulles pulled the plug and Macmillan gave Anthony the old heave-ho....and the Government continued and won the 1957 election handsomely leaving it to Harold Wilson to be the first Labour PM in 13 years.

Dumping Blair and Hoon and the Kitchen Cabinet would have allowed Labour to survive as a Government and the Queen would have refused a dissolution because the Labour Party could win any Confidence Vote in the commons, even now.