Lord Butler's report on the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run up to war was damning indeed.
On the intelligence itself: 'seriously flawed' and ''insufficiently robust'. On the infamous September dossier which helped put the case for war: given 'more weight than it could bear' - and the 45 minute claim should should not have been included without context.
But Lord Butler said there was 'no deliberate attempt on the part of the Government to mislead".
Tony Blair said he fully accepted the report's findings - and took personal responsibility for any mistakes.
But he insisted 'no-one lied. No-one made up the intelligence' - and declared the world was better off without Saddam Hussein.
We were told that Iraq was a war based on intelligence, but the Butler report makes clear the intelligence just wasn't there. The sources were thin or unreliable. The Prime Minister was claiming certainty when there was no certainty available.
Lord Butler and his inquiry team paint a picture of failings from the top to the bottom of government and the intelligence services.
They have phrased the report to avoid pulling any individual down, but the sort of mistakes catalogued would normally lead to resignations.
The Joint intelligence committee - made up of the heads of all the intelligence services - failed in its responsibilities.
It approved the Government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction even though that dossier repeatedly suggested certainty about Iraq's WMD when the original intelligence was shaky and hedged with doubts and caveats.
When the dossier was published, newspapers leapt on the claim that Iraq was capable of firing off chemical warheads in 45 minutes flat. The headlines were wrong and the dossier was misleading the Butler Report concludes
Andrew Gilligan - the journalist who originally reported that the Government had "sexed up" its dossier left the press conference beaming. Lord Hutton condemned his reporting - today, he said, he felt vindicated.
The Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee John Scarlett again and again appears to have stripped away the caveats, the doubts and uncertainties about whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons.
The Butler report says future JIC chairman should be used to dealing with politicians - but denied that meant that number 10 had played John Scarlett like a violin.
One committee member said no-one must ever again produce a public intelligence report like the dossier.
The report also exposes big problems further down the intelligence chain. Once the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, MI6 officers' information on Iraqi WMD was dependent on a small no. of sources. Could not entirely reliably depend on a small no. of sources.
Once the UN inspectors were thrown out of Iraq after 1998, MI6 had four main sources in Iraq for its claims that Iraq was still developing chemical and biological weaponry, they were often asked to report on issues outside their expertise.
One - the report says - often passed on second hand information and his intelligence was "open to doubt".
Another source, whose information fed into intelligence assessments has now been dropped as unreliable.
MI6 has decided another source working on biological agents was "seriously flawed".
MI6's other two sources are still considered reliable - but THEY weren't reporting worrying activity on WMD.
"...because of the scarcity of sources and the urgent requirement for intelligence, more credence was given to untried agents than would normally be the case."
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