My friend Peter Oborne, whose book The Rise of Political Lying is a must-read, and who is one of the most eloquent and principled opponents of the war, has sent me this email about my post below. He has given me permission to quote him, and I think it only proper that I do:

I have the answer to your demand for evidence that we were lied to before the Iraq War. The case is set out on pp190-195 of my book The Rise of Political Lying.

The government dossier of September 2002 was a fraudulent prospectus for war. It is not simply that its claims subsequently turned out to be untrue. Tony Blair misrepresented speculative information from intelligence sources as hard fact.

Had a company prospectus been as cavalier with its statements of profits and assets as the British government was in claims about Iraq’s so-called WMD the fraud squad would have been brought in and the board of directors would have been arrested. I make this case on pages 263 and 264 of the book, (and did so only after discussing the issue in detail with corporate lawyers and investment bankers). It should be borne in mind that city fraud cases normally relate only to stolen money. Blair’s fraud on the British public has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.