Of great interest to me is the leaking of the report. My points of interest are:
1. It was leaked to "The Sun". The Sun was on the Iraq issue very pro Blair and is no great supporter of the BBC, regularly criticising it. Seeing as the Hutton report was so damning of the BBC, leaking the report to the most "pro Blair anti BBC" newspaper would cause maximum effect.
2. Very few people had access to the report in advance. Almost all of those who did gave evidence to the Hutton enquiry. If one of these people were to be found to have been involved in some way with the leaking of report, that IMHO, calls into question their integrity and honesty. And in so doing that may call into question the honesty and accuracy of the evidence they gave to the enquiry.
3. The leak came within a couple of hours of the PM winning the "Tuition Fees" vote. It turned out to be one of his greatest evenings since coming to power. Incidentally one of people to get a copy of the report was The Office of the Speaker of the House of Commons, for distribution to the Houses of Parliament in due course. That office would have, in all likelyhood, IMHO, been very empty say between about 1830-2000 on the Tuesday night. The first news of the leak came on the evening news programmes at about 2200. Timings are interesting........
All conspiracy stories off course.
As for the 45 minute claim, I have grave misgivings. As someone who left the military a little over two years ago, my understanding of what "45 minutes" wrt a WMD means is something like this:
Weapon platform and weapon fully operation.
Personnel fully trained and prepared.
Targeting information available and means to pass it to the delivery platform in place.
The 45 minutes, IMHO, is purely the time between when the Command gives the order to use it to its being dropper/sprayed etc on the target.
Given the above we would have by now uncovered such a weapon system, and there would have been more than one "source" for its existence.
I do not believe Tony Blair is a liar. What I believe is that he became so convinced he was right on the Iraq issue, and so far before the time of the war, that he failed to take onboard any information, whatever the source (ie Hans Blix) that he may have been wrong. That does not make him a liar, that makes him a man of very bad judgement. A man of bad judgement should not be the Prime Minister of a country. And especially not one of a country with nuclear weapons.
As with most of the great scandals, we will probably never know the truth. The 30 year rule, I bet a lot of the packs on this issue have already been weeded or if not no records kept etc etc.
If I had stayed in the military I have little doubt that I would have been involved in the Iraq war. And I have no doubt that the Command would have required of me to inform my men and women of the reasons for which they were about to go to war. Namely "that Iraq presents a clear and imminent threat to the region, the UK and its interests and has WMD that are capable of being used within 45 minutes notice". Following the failure of any such weapons to have been found, or that they are likely to be found, if I was still in the military I would have very serious missgivings that the confidence of my men and women in my leadership and judgement would have been severly damaged as a result of what has since been unveiled (or failed to be unveiled).
In all probability Blair and his mates will survive this crisis and will win the next election and the reigns will be handed to Gordon soon after, probably within a year say. The second enquiry of course does not have the remit to investigate the politicians, rather handily.
There is a small probability, however remote, that someone somewhere may blow the lid on any "conspiracy" that may allegedly have taken place. And that could lead to one of the most spectacular resignations of a PM and a Government in the history of the modern world.