Speaking of failures of intelligence

It just keeps getting better and better. The UK's Independent for February 8 lets us in on the fact that

Tony Blair was sent three intelligence reports in the six months during the run up to the Iraq war, including one that warned him that information on whether Saddam Hussein still held any chemical or biological weapons was "inconsistent" and "sparse". ...

Last week the Government slipped out a follow-up document, with the clumsy title Government Response to the Intelligence and Security Committee Report on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was placed with minimal publicity in the Commons Vote Office.

The document makes the startling revelation that the intelligence services had already reported, before the war began, that Iraq's ballistic missiles had probably been dismantled, and that the presence of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq was making it difficult for Iraq to threaten anyone with weapons of mass destruction.

The document added: "The JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] assessments produced in October and December 2002 and again in March 2003 reflected this point. In December 2002, the JIC specifically pointed out that Iraq's ability to use chemical and biological weapons (CBW) might be constrained by the difficulty of producing more while UN inspectors were present.

"In March 2003, [the JIC] stated that intelligence on the timing of when Iraq might use CBW was inconsistent and that the intelligence on the deployment was sparse."

In Britain, they've started asking "What did the PM know and when did he know it?"