What we really need to know

Later today, the Commons' Foreign Affairs Select Committee delivers its report on whether Downing Street exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Leaks suggest it will conclude by a majority verdict that Alastair Campbell did not "sex up" the dossier presented to Parliament which highlighted a warning that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

This will immediately be presented as a victory by the Government over the BBC, and Downing Street will redouble its calls for a retraction such as Tony Blair demanded yesterday.

The BBC on its part, backed by its Governors who met in special session last night, will fight back, insisting that it stands by the original story written by Andrew Gilligan.

In this proxy war, full of belligerence and posturing, the only probable casualty will be the truth of how Tony Blair arrived at his decision to take Britain into war.

To point out that the quarrel between the Government and the BBC is essentially a sideshow is not to dismiss it as insignificant. It is vital to both parties in the sideshow that they do not surrender the field.

Greg Dyke, the BBC's director-general, believes that to back down at this stage would set a dangerous precedent and threaten the BBC's independence.

For the Government, the stakes are even higher. If there was evidence that Downing Street used intelligence as raw material to create an impression that Britain's security was at risk, the entire legality of the invasion of Iraq would be called into question.

But for the general public there are more important questions about the war which are being lost sight of in all this diversionary smoke and fire.

They are not teasing, forensic questions aimed at making Downing Street squirm, but the kind of simple queries which every sentient adult in Britain will have pondered over, if only because committing our nation to war is a decision that might affect all of us.

Who or what convinced British intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which could be used, when from all appearances so far he had none?

When did the Prime Minister promise George Bush that he would commit British forces to the invasion, and how long afterwards was the Cabinet fully informed of this?

To clear up some of these issues seems to be as much in the Government's interest as that of the public. Yet Mr Blair has actively restricted the ability of the parliamentary Select Committee to reach the truth, even within its narrow remit, by refusing to appear before it and refusing to allow his Chief of Staff or the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee to appear before it either.

These people will give their version of events - but only before an Intelligence Committee, which meets in secret, is appointed by Tony Blair and reports to him. By shifting the public and media focus to the issue of Alastair Campbell and the dossier, Mr Blair seems to be hoping that the questions about the war that really matter will fade away.