It is “difficult to judge” whether al-Hussein missiles could be available for use. Efforts to regenerate the Iraqi missile programme “probably” began in 1995. And so the “dossier” goes on.Now maybe Saddam has restarted his WMD programme. Let’s all say it out loud, 20 times: Saddam is a brutal, wicked tyrant. But are “almost certainly”, “appears”, “probably” and “if” really the rallying call to send our grenadiers off to the deserts of Kut-al-Amara?There is high praise for UN weapons inspectors And there is more trickery in the relevant chapter. It quotes Dr Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN inspection commission, as saying that in the absence of (post-1998) inspections, it is impossible to verify Iraqi disarmament compliance. But on 18 August this year, the very same Dr Blix told Associated Press that he couldn’t say with certainty that Baghdad possessed WMDs.

This quotation is excised from the Blair “dossier”, of course.So there it is. If these pages of trickery are based on “probably” and “if”, we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children How’s that for a war crime?
More from Robert Fisk. Here in Berlin the re-election of Gerhard Schr? as Germany’s Chancellor was met almost with a sense of relief – except at the CDU headquarters where there was only an hour or so of elation when they shouted Jawohl! and knocked back the Bavarian beer before it became clear they had lost rather than won. But then Berlin is not CDU territory: it returned not a single CDU candidate at the weekend’s election. It is also a city where the business community is hardly evident and that lives off subsidies from taxpayers in the rest of Germany. But it has huge debts and is not, on its own, really a viable economic entity; it looks great and, apart from its high unemployment, provides an enviable way of life for most of its residents Without reform, it really cannot go on.

But, Berliners ask, why reform when things still seem pretty good?That is Germany’s dilemma The voters ducked the issue last weekend. The markets, in their usual brutal way, duly cast their vote on the decision, marking German shares down. But in a sense the voters’ indecisiveness is understandable, for the campaign of both candidates downplayed the specifics of economic reform. Still, had the centre-right coalition won, Germany would feel a different place. It didn’t and it doesn’t.Of course, there will be reforms of sorts. Just before the election, the Hartz Commission reported on possible changes to the labour market: for example, making it harder for unemployed people to refuse job offers. But that is not really getting to the heart of the problem; it is not so much that people refuse jobs but that there are not enough jobs being created.

The economy, inching forward at half a per cent a year, isn’t growing fast enough to do so.Germany is quite close to one of those vicious spirals where slow growth cuts tax revenue and increases welfare spending, which in turn forces tax increases, which in turn chokes off growth in consumption, which slows growth still further. Yet to many Germans – or, indeed, to the casual foreign visitor – things don’t look like this, which is precisely why making the case for reform is so difficult.Berlin encapsulates both the strengths and weaknesses of Germany It looks stunning. Every year another swathe of renovation is completed; the new offices shine; transport is swift and cheap; and the streets of the centre are so spotless that you could eat your breakfast off them But it is in recession. I have not seen GDP figures for Berlin itself, but I know recession when I see it. Hundreds of taxis wait at the airport for the handful of customers Those spotless streets are void of people. The shops and restaurants are two-thirds empty.This is a country where retail sales are falling on average by 5 per cent a year, and I would guess by more in Berlin.