Time to give Paul Reynolds another bash, I think.

Not that this article is wildly wrong about anything, but the smug superiority Reynolds affects in his writing always makes for errors and slantedness.

Like most BBC journalists Reynolds seems to share the opinion of Jeremy Paxman, quoting H.L. Mencken, that the proper relationship between journalist and politician is the same as between dog and lamp post. In that spirit Reynolds takes one phrase of Jack Straw's, notes the omission in it of the word 'interim' from the mention of the new Iraqi government, and infers that the 'policians' are trying to, in modern parlance, 'big up' the Iraqi interim government.

Another thing he does is give the anti-war perspective all the best lines and most of the airtime, the first bite at the cherry and the best. Quel surprise!

Aptly named Toby Dodge, admittedly labelled 'a critic of American and British policy in Iraq', gets to set his terms unchallenged. He's the one to define what 'multilateral' means- and it isn't a UN resolution, apparently; that was just a 'nod' from France and Russia.

When Dodge describes the new Iraqi (interim) government as a 'green zone phenomenon' it is helpfully explained for us by Reynolds as 'the sealed area in Baghdad from which the Coalition Authority and the Governing Council operate'- but not challenged. The fact that the first act of the 'green zone' government was to disband militias up and down Iraq seems to be beyond the BBC's own 'green zone'.

Come to that, it's another precious pot swaps with kettle moment as the BBC, famously bound to their Baghdad hotel bars and friendly former Baathist translators, accuse the Iraq government of insularity (accuse them by their silence).

The disbanding of militias would also appear to give the lie to this:

'Although technically sovereign, the interim government cannot in practice do a great deal, partly because the majority Shia did not want it to be able to take decisions in advance of an elected government. '

Reynolds concludes by saying that

'It can be seen that the interim government is a staging post, not the destination.'

and I'll conclude by saying that it ought to be obvious that no-one's pretending it was anything else- unless you're determined to piss on them whatever, that is.