I can’t help be powerfully dissapointed by the Hutton report. How an investigating body – in this case a retired senior judge – can miss the whole point of the BBC report where the thrust was on the fact that many intelligence personnel within the UK disagreed with the validity of the government threat assesment dossier, is beyond me. The very fact that the 45-minute claim was based on a single uncorraborated source is not under focus – a fact that took the country to war – but the fact that investigative journalism was based on a single source is. Lord Hutton, do throw Alistair Campbell’s notes out of the window. Also, do throw out Dr. Kelly’s haggard expression as he left the government inquiry that day. In fact throw out everything except the Kay report which was almost being simultaneously broadcast on CNN and some passages from Kay’s speech:

“I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense [..] And it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarised chemical and biological weapons there. [..] It turns out we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that’s most disturbing [..] You will finally determine that it is going to take an outside inquiry both to do it and to give yourselves, and the American people, the confidence that you have done it.”

Lord Hutton should have focused on either the faliure of the intelligence community, or the fact that the dossier was indeed “sexed up” since many intelligence reports prior and after 9/11 seemed to point in a diametrically opposite direction.

It is indeed bloody sad that the BBC is the scapegoat of all this.