Now for the Question Hutton Would Not Ask ; Lord Hutton Refused to Judge Whether the Government's Intelligence Dossier Justified War. Yet This Is the Key Point

Summary

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SOME will rejoice, others will be dismayed. But the issues raised by the report of Lord Hutton into the death of the Government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly, go to the heart of the democratic process and will be hotly debated far beyond this momentous week in politics. The report has largely exonerated the Government of wrongdoing. In investigating the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death, Hutton sought to answer specific questions, about the Government's responsibility for naming Dr Kelly and its preparation of the key September 2002 dossier. In doing so, his inquiry has thrown up an astonishing amount of evidence which shines a bright light on some of the murkiest corners of Government decision-making - above all, on its decision to go to war in Iraq last year.

The first of Hutton's judgments is that No 10 did not exercise undue influence on the preparation of intelligence in the September dossier. He says that the Joint Intelligence Committee took full ownership for it. And he dismisses as "unfounded" the claim by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan in his report of 29 May 2003, that the Government knew its claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction could be launched in 45 minutes to be untrue.

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Now for the Question Hutton Would Not Ask ; Lord Hutton Refused to Judge Whether the Government's Intelligence Dossier Justified War. Yet This Is the Key Point

But while Hutton concludes that Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell did not "sex up" the 45-minute claim, Campbell effectively admitted to doing exactly that with changes to the text of the dossier designed to make it support the Government's stance more unequivocally.

Emails flew back and forth betwee...

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