The penny drops

The story of the new Iraq dossier memos gets good coverage in the press today, although it was largely ignored by the mainstream broadcast media. I don't think anyone mentioned - or even knew - that it was my freedom of information request that forced the documents into the public domain.

I've done a piece for the Guardian today with the estimable Richard Norton-Taylor. The Independent also has a good take on it currently leading its website, stating without caveat or qualification, that the dossier was sexed-up. The Times covers it briefly but the Mail does it better.

Newsnight had a good, if brief, piece on it yesterday, perhaps reflecting the BBC's continuing reluctance to be seen to be causing trouble for the government on the dossier. The best line of all came from Today's Sarah Monague, who "hestitated" to use the phrase "sexing up" but did so anyway.

This appears to have prompted the Telegraph, which covered the story on its website yesterday, to do another, good, piece this morning:

Mandarins openly discussed removing caveats from the security assessment of the ability of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, to deploy weapons of mass destructions.