[Nor]

The BBC have unreservedly apologised now. Thing is... once Dyke realised he was backing a journalist who was wrong he should have said, hang on a minute, lets just stop this now. The independance of the BBC is very important and something the BBC should fight to protect, but Dyke et al should have done it on an issue where they weren't wrong. This has just made them look like complete muppets by backing a journalist who was sexing up his own story, who was lying about what a source had told him and actually accusing the government of something by doing the same thing himself. They aren't values that should be defended.

With regards to the Hutton report vindicating Blair. Well.. true the report doesn't cover everything, but it did cover the sexing up of the dossier. One of the main arguments used by the anti war camp that hte government was lying about WMD. If Blair has been cleared of sexing up the dossier, doesn't that show that they didn't lie about the case for war ? Granted, through hindsight its looking increasingly likely that there isn't the WMD and WMD programs that everyone thought, but because we haven't found WMD doesn't mean that Blair lied about it, it looks to me like he following poor intelligence. But who do you rely on but your inteligence services when it comes to making decisions like this ? If your intelligence services are saying Iraq has WMD wouldn't it have been wrong for Tony Blair to say, ah nah I doubt it, lets just leave them alone. I suspect the prospect of a dirty bomb originating in Iraq being detonated in London kept him awake at night.