Letter: Trial of Blair

Apart from contradicting Alastair Campbell, what Major-General Laurie said (your report, 13 May) is not really new.

Blair gave Campbell managerial control of civil servants. This both undermined the political neutrality of the civil service and enabled Campbell to get important caveats, about the unreliability of the available intelligence, deleted from the September 2002 intelligence dossier.

So parliament was presented with a document which turned what should have been a politically neutral, factual statement into a political argument for war.

This was all in Lord Butler's report, in 2004, on the "Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction". It said "in translating material from JIC assessments into the dossier, warnings were lost about the limited intelligence base"… "The language in the dossier may have left readers the impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence behind the judgments than was the case".

The prime minister's description in his statement to the House of Commons that the picture painted by the intelligence was "extensive, detailed and authoritative" may have reinforced this impression: "We conclude that it was a serious weakness that the JIC's warnings … were not made sufficiently clear."

The report added that it would be essential in future that "clearer and more effective dividing lines between assessment and advocacy are established".

I have never understood why parliament and the media did not take more account of the report's criticisms. Perhaps it was so long that few took the time to read it in detail and decipher the restrained language habitually employed by a former senior civil servant.

One exception was Tam Dalyell. In July 2004 he told the Commons "it was the policy objectives that drove the intelligence, whereas the intelligence should have driven the policy objectives. The dossier was really part of a post-decision-making process, and the prime minister's statement on its publication simply reinforced the impression of more authoritative intelligence than that which in fact existed".

The Chilcot Inquiry must hold Blair to account for misleading parliament and taking us into an invasion that has enabled terrorists to claim the West has launched a new crusade against Islam.

Ronnie Cramond

Oswald Road

Edinburgh