The missing witness from the Iraq Inquiry

Watching Blair and Straw give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry I was struck by the way they attempted to argue that at the time of the invasion no-one could have believed that Iraq didn't have weapons on mass destruction.  Cook's diaries, The Point of Departure: Diaries from the Front Bench, shed interesting lightand are well worth reading if you want to understand the decision making process of Blair's Government. However it is his resignation speech that is worth listening to - it reminds us that, after accessing the available intelligence Cook was able to tell the House of Commons that:

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term - namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target.

and

On Iraq, I believe that the prevailing mood of the British people is sound ... they suspect that they are being pushed too quickly into conflict by a US Administration with an agenda of its own.