Paul Reynolds has been, as they say, 'all over' the Butler report. His several analyses have, however, in my view been selective and used to enforce a simple thesis: that Butler in his unaccusatory judgements just wished to soften the blow on British Intelligence which fell so heavily on the CIA from the Senate report.

Although Reynolds suggests that the Senate 'loves criticising agencies of the government', he does not mean that the Senate's criticism may have been exaggerated (a product of the hothouse perhaps). Quite the opposite- for Reynolds it is the Butler report that has been too weak in its criticisms.

According to Reynolds, the British report was 'loathe to criticise' and 'cautious', whereas the US report was 'decisive'. For him, the task is to 'decode' the Butler report.

On this occasion, weirdly, American values appear to have won the BBC's heart!

As a sidelight to this, guess who was popping up on BBConline with his response to Butler? None other than Gregory Dyke, no doubt as bitter as Ray Parlour's (ex-)wife to have walked away with only approaching half a million pounds. And, needless to say, the Beeb's latest enthusiasm (in both NewsNight and BBC News contexts) has been the supposed 'underpinning' piece of intelligence, which was withdrawn- guess when- in July 03, just as Hutton was conducting his investigation into Gilligan's claims about the 'dodgy' dossier (and Dr Kelly's death, too).

As an indication of Reynolds' analysis, compare Reynolds' and Butler's view of intelligence sources in Iraq:

Reynolds: 'It turns out that human sources used by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) were unreliable'

Butler: 'Of the two dominant sources, the first reported accurately and authoritatively on some key issues... the second dominant source remains the subject of continuing SIS validation.'

(Reynolds' quote taken from his article 'The Devil Is In The Detail')

Not jumping to any conclusions then, are we Paul?

Actually, contrary to Reynolds' assessment, the report is full of affirmations that the assessments of the intelligence services were professional and circumspect, with only occasional exceptions.

From my reading of the report, I would offer an alternative thesis: that Butler's criticisms are mild because it was never intended that he should critique the real problem- the lack of an aggressive and detailed strategy to effectively infiltrate Saddam's regime prior to 9/11 and in the months afterwards (which is no longer relevant now that we have taken the ultimate necessary action).[Update: I should stop tinkering with what I've said here! Obviously after 9/11 infiltrating Saddam's regime would have been much harder. However, between 1998- when UNscom left- and 2001 we had little inside information. This leaves the previous wholehearted UNscom strategy open to question, as well as the period '98- 01.]

The purpose of Butler was to offer something to the Paul Reynolds's of this world as a way of saying 'look, we've had an enquiry and... etc... yawn- let's go and beat the Tories.'