A good day to bury old news...

Should we be suprised that today, of all days, the FCO complied with the Information Commissioner's demand to release draft copies of the WMD dossier...?

Nonetheless, the documents make for interesting reading - particularly with the benefit of the retrospective eye.

The key headline from the draft is that it didn't include reference to the now infamous "45-minute" claim.

The argument about that particular 'fact' was, at the time, merely a convenient tactic for those opposed to the military action to pretend that Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat. The evidence, on balance, suggests that he was at the time the document was put together.

The Government could have done a better job in presenting the available intelligence back in 2002. However, it seems clear enough that the final dossier was something approximating the available intelligence at the time.

Yet I'm not so sure history will remember it as such...

You can find some of the documents, as well as a summary report, on the BBC News website here. And the July 2002 draft here.