Please invite fewer Economist correspondents and more bloggers like Rachel onto the show, because it’s their voices that I listen to ROS for.

The found no such thing.

OBVIOUSLY they lied – Bush and Blair claimed that they had good intelligence data that Iraq had WMD’s. They didn’t. They neither had WMD’s, nor did they have good intelligence to that effect.

When you make a statement that’s untrue, it’s a lie. You can’t say it’s an honest mistake, because it was self-evident to millions of citizens in the UK, the majority of people in most other EU countries, and even a few people in the US,

that such intelligence did not exist. It makes no sense to say that we could see it and Blair couldn’t, so that rules out the “honest mistake” argument, therefore it was a lie.

My point was that, contrary to your post above, the Hutton inquire did comment on the so called “dodgy dossierâ€?, and that it found the charge to be bunk. And the only reason I am repeating myself is because people do not seem to get it: seperate inquiries have found the “they lied” argument to be horse manuer.

The dossier had not been “sexed upâ€?, but was in line with available intelligence, although the Joint Intelligence Committee, chaired by John Scarlett, may have been “subconsciously influencedâ€? by the government”

What’s your point? Being “in line with available intelligence” is not a judgement on whether the available intelligence was valid or not.

“And the Butler Inquiry was a all white wash .. thats right .. move along people, nothing to see here, nothing to see here.”

Repeating yourself doesn’t add anything to the debate.

From the Wikipedia entry on the Hutton Inquiry

The dossier had not been “sexed up”, but was in line with available intelligence, although the Joint Intelligence Committee, chaired by John Scarlett, may have been “subconsciously influenced” by the government

And the Butler Inquiry was a all white wash .. thats right .. move along people, nothing to see here, nothing to see here.

No, not true at all.

First of all, the Hutton Inquirly had nothing to do with the topic at hand – it was about whether Blair had any responsibility for the death of David Kelly, and that was the limit of its scope.

And the Butler Inquiry was nothing but a whitewash because it was was not allowed to follow the data wherever it went, but was forced to confine itself way too narrowly to draw any relevent conclusions. This is why Howard pulled out of it.

Both the Blair and Bush governments take the same tack on this – people demand an inquiry into the war or 9/11 or treatment of prisoners or whatever. So they set one up that deliberately is not allowed to ask the most important questions, or given full access to the intelligence information it needs to be effective. When anyone complains about this, Bush, Blain, & Co. excuse it by saying that secrecy is necessary to keep information out of the hands of the enemy. It’s a classic catch-22 created by Bush and VBlair to hide their lies and incompetence. Unfortunately for them the RESULTS of their lies and incompetetnce become clearer every day.

Funny, but I thought both the Hutton Inquiry and the Butler Inquiry found the charge of a “dodgy dossierâ€? to be a hill of beans and that British (and by extension US) intel was reasonable to conclude most of what it did, including the African unranium? In fact, didn’t some high ups at the BBC resign in disgrace for thier unethical shenanigans?

I know, nothing to see here, keep moving ….

Yes; this is very insightful and I’m surprised that more people have not found this retreat from honor and intellectual honesty by two men we THOUGHT had an abundance of both to be remarkable.