Blair faces intelligence verdict
By CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley
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 Washington and London have both faced investigations into intelligence failures before the war in Iraq.
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Another week, another Iraq inquiry.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has already faced three probes into events surrounding the Iraq war -- two by parliamentary investigators, one by the judge Lord Hutton into the death of weapons scientist David Kelly.
Blair and his government have so far been cleared of "sexing up" intelligence. But how good was the intelligence?
On Wednesday, former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler is due to pass judgment. And Britain's spy chiefs, say experts, can expect an uncomfortable week.
Blair, speaking Tuesday at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said he did not accept he had been fed "duff" intelligence on Iraq.
He stressed he did not "disrespect" those who were against the war against Iraq, but by the same token he did not expect those against the conflict to "disrespect" those who supported it. He said the world was better off and "more secure without him (Saddam) in office."
Gary Samore, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "In the case of Iraq the quality of intelligence and the analysis of that intelligence was abysmally bad."
More sensitive still, did intelligence chiefs like John Scarlett, chairman of Downing Street's Joint Intelligence Committee, let politicians push them too far in stripping out the caveats?
"The most difficult thing for leaders of the intelligence community is to tell the political leadership that they're really not sure, that they really don't have good information and therefore they're in the realm of guesswork," Samore said.
In Britain that matters because of the way Blair made the case for war: He insisted that Iraq had military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons which could be activated within 45 minutes.
But last week he told MPs: "I have to accept that we have not found them and we may never find them."
Someone blundered.
In the U.S., CIA chief George Tenet departed. But in the UK, Scarlett, who insisted he controlled the dossier on Saddam's weapons which was the source of Blair's claim, was controversially promoted by Blair to be the next head of MI6 -- before the outcome of the Butler report.
The earlier Hutton inquiry was widely condemned as a government whitewash. Lord Butler, say experts, won't want to face the same accusation.
No one knows how much he will criticize politicians as well as intelligence chiefs.
But lawmakers agree that anything which puts the focus back on exchanges between intelligence chiefs and Downing Street about those unfound weapons of mass destruction is unlikely to help a prime minister who built his case for war on their existence and who has already seen public confidence plummet.
