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The Hutton report has been released. All the reports are claiming Hutton concluded that the September dossier was not "sexed up". Thats not entirely true. He stated that it depends what you mean by "sex up" - if it means embellishing with false material, then he says that the dossier was not sexed up, however if you take it as meaning "that whilst the intelligence contained in the dossier was believed to be reliable, the dossier was drafted in such a way as to make the case against Saddam Hussein as strong as the intelligence contained in it permitted" then "because of the drafting suggestions made by 10 Downing Street for the purpose of making a strong case against Saddam Hussein, it could be said that the Government "sexed-up" the dossier".
In other words, Hutton accepts that the government "sexed up" the dossier to make the threat from Iraq appear as dangerous as possible using the available evidence. And he doesnt even seem to look at what the all party Commons committee called the "sin of omission" regarding the context of the 45 minute claim and other claims. He does also note that "the desire of the Prime Minister to have a dossier which, whilst consistent with the available intelligence, was as strong as possible in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's WMD, may have subconsciously influenced Mr Scarlett and the other members of the JIC to make the wording of the dossier somewhat stronger than it would have been if it had been contained in a normal JIC assessment."
What the government should have produced a dossier which was a sober, balanced assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, instead the government spun and "sexed up" the dossier to make Saddam seem as threatening as possible - what we got was not a threat assessment but a manifesto for war.
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