THE ARROGANCE REVEALED IN THE DOWNING STREET MEMOS

A must-read interview with Sunday Times reporter Michael Smith, who has led coverage of the Downing Street Memo.

As some of you may have guessed by now before I became a journalist, I served in the army. That makes me all the more angry when people fight wars they don't need to and kill people who don't need to be killed, not least because it is never the politicians who get killed it is the ordinary soldiers.

Bin Laden is a legitimate target, Iraq, even an Iraq led by Saddam Hussein, was not. This was an illegal war but the most criminal part of it all was the lazy, arrogant way they went into it. (British tanks crossing the start lines, in a war being fought about WMD, did not even have any chemical or biological filters fitted because the Ministry of Defence failed to buy them in time.)

Just look at all those memos again, don't look for fixed intelligence, don't look for illegality. Just look at the lack of preparation, look how right all those experts who said it would all turn out badly were and then wonder how many British and American soldiers died because those politicians were too arrogant to take the advice of the experts.