Quotes of the Day

It's official: no one in Tony Blair's government "sexed up" the dossier on Iraqi weapons, the charge that launched a thousand headlines and the nastiest crisis of his six years in office. That was the verdict of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, the cross-party watchdog cleared to see secrets and interrogate top spies. It found the dossier was entirely the product of the intelligence services, whose independence "had not been compromised in any way." But the British Prime Minister can't relax yet. The committee also said the dossier should have clarified that many of its judgments rested on spotty data, and that its most newsworthy claim — that Iraq could use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes — applied only to battlefield systems.

On the core question of whether Blair hyped the case for war, the report revealed an intriguing omission. In contrast to the publicity he gave the dossier, which backed his argument, he kept mum about a later intelligence assessment that concluded a war would actually make it easier for terrorists to get their hands on Saddam's arsenal. Blair told the committee he judged that risk was less than that of giving Saddam more time to forge a link between terrorists and his wmds — but one risk he avoided was letting M.P.s and the public in on the internal debate.

The committee drew blood from Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. He testified that dissent about the dossier among Ministry of Defence analysts was minimal, despite knowing that two had written formal complaints. Only when these letters were going to Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly did they arrive at the committee — a sequence it judged "unhelpful and potentially misleading" — for which he apologized.

Hutton resumes work again this week, first summoning bbc director general Greg Dyke and some defense officials before recalling previous witnesses for cross-examination. No one is predicting a killer blow to Blair. But an accumulation of small cuts can still hobble.

• J.F.O. McALLISTER | London
• Blair and Hoon must still await Hutton's judgment