Campbells soup

Mr Campbell denies pressing intelligence officials to beef up the evidence against Iraq. Observers were left wondering how the claim that Saddams possession of WMD was beyond doubt made it into the foreword to the dossier officially written by Mr Blair. Sir John Scarlett,who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time of the war,downplayed his own role in concocting that foreword when he testified last month.

Mr Campbell also said that anger at the notorious claim that Iraq could launch a strike within 45 minutes had been overdone. It was not as big a part of the governments case for war as is now remembered,he insisted,and was actually at the conservative end of intelligence estimates. But he conceded it should have been made clear that the figure referred only to Iraqs ability to deploy battlefield munitions.

To the extent that anything new was learned from Mr Campbell,it concerned the workings of the Blair government rather than the vexed question of the intelligence about Iraq. Mr Campbell inadvertently paints a picture of a prime minister isolated from all but his closest aides. Clare Short,the left-winger who resigned as international-development secretary after the invasion,was shut out in case she leaked information to the press. The cabinet as a whole was not privy to letters Mr Blair wrote to President Bush that,according to Mr Campbells recollection,signalled Britains early willingness to back a war against Iraq. It is not clear if these letters will be made public.

The role of the current prime minister then the keeper of the war-chest as chancellor of the exchequer also remains opaque. Gordon Brown,who Mr Campbell says was closely involved in the discussions leading up to war,will not appear before the inquiry until the summer. The panel will adjourn in March to avoid influencing unduly the general election expected shortly thereafter.

The truth is that Iraq is fading from voters minds. Britain officially pulled out last spring. The recession and the rising body-count in Afghanistan are graver worries now. Mr Campbell,despite the advice he still gives Mr Brown,is in fact a ghost from the past. And there have already been four Iraq inquiries,though none as comprehensive as this one.

Some reckon its failure to unearth masses of new information is down to a mix of mendacious reticence on the part of key witnesses and the pusillanimity of their inquisitors. A kinder interpretation may be that,even for the loquacious Mr Campbell,there is not much left to say.