The British and their intelligence failures

Speculation runs rampant in British newspapers as Lord Butler's report on British intelligence leading up to the Iraqi war is scheduled for release later this week.

According to the Evening Standard, Lord Butler will also say Foreign Secretary Jack Straw overruled legal advice that the Iraq war would be unlawful without a second United Nations resolution.

According to the Financial Times, quoting a source who has seen it, the Butler report will say MI6 was put under pressure to justify Downing Street's decision to go to war.

As a result, some of the intelligence from inside Iraq was inadequately sourced, including the claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within 45 minutes, the paper claims the report will say.

The Brits, however, feel very comfortable laying the blame at the feet of 10 Downing Street:

[Former deputy chief of Defence Intelligence Staff John] Morrison told Panorama he could "almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall" when the prime minister told MPs the threat from Iraq was serious and current.

He accused Mr Blair of making public statements which went beyond what experts could have reasonably concluded from the same evidence.

"In moving from what the dossier said Saddam had, which was a capability possibly, to asserting that Iraq presented a threat, then the prime minister was going way beyond anything any professional analyst would have agreed," he said.