People died.

Good piece, It highlights something that's always struck me as odd: Why didn't Gilligan's BBC bosses simply check his intial report, and, having found it to be less than a sterling example of professional reporting, issue a contrite public statement and cut their losses?

Their adamant and continuing protests to the contrary testify to the partisan ideological basis of the BBC's behavior.

Bad piece.

The facts of the matter, which tend to get lost in the noise, are that the BBC appologised a long time ago for the wording of Gilligans original report - which was, for the record, broadcast once at 6.07am.

The substantive of Gilligans report, which is also lost, is that there were elements in the security services, the MOD and government who were unhappy with the quality of the dossier and demanded changes. Chief of Staff to Tony Blair Jonathon Powell and Alistair Campbell ordered 18 substative changes by email as presented to Hutton.

Hutton has ruled that these issues fell outside the scope of his report. Ignoring for a moment the number of QCs saying he screwed up, the enquiry that TB has been forced to hold into intelligence failures will hopefully deal with those.