A lot of interesting discussion of yesterday's Iraq debate in the papers today. The most striking piece for me was this from Robert Fisk. His main point is that the dossier is full of words like 'if', 'probably' and 'maybe'. If they remain this doubtful then we don't have enough evidence to go to war. If they are not, and therefore Saddam has been managing to carry on building 'weapons of mass destruction', then half a million Iraqi children have been killed for no reason. Here's an extract:

Let's go back to 12 May 1996. Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, had told us that sanctions worked and prevented Saddam from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Our Tory government agreed, and Tony Blair faithfully toed the line. But on 12 May, Mrs Albright appeared on CBS television. Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, asked: 'We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?' To the world's astonishment, Mrs Albright replied: 'I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.'

Now we know - if Mr Blair is telling us the truth - that the price was not worth it. The price was paid in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. But it wasn't worth a dime. The Blair 'dossier' tells us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction. All that nonsense about dual- use technology, the ban on children's pencils - because lead could have a military use - and our refusal to allow Iraq to import equipment to restore the water-treatment plants that we bombed in the Gulf War, was a sham.

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