The verdicts

"Closer reading ... presents us with one stunning and inescapable fact: the Prime Minister knew, from the evidence supplied to him, that there were many doubts and uncertainties about the intelligence."

The Sun: "Two things are now beyond dispute. The Prime Minister did not lie to the nation before the war on Iraq. And the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein."

Boris Johnson, Daily Telegraph: "Facing a nation made deeply mistrustful by the relentless no-show of the weapons of mass destruction, Lord Butler could not help himself. Like a man driving a carload of squabbling children to a distant beach, he was determined to look on the bright side."

Financial Times: "Lord Butler's examination of the quality of intelligence ... is telling despite its we-just-want-to-be-helpful tone. It makes clear the case for war was misleading, even if it found that Tony Blair acted in good faith."

Paul Routledge, The Mirror: "What counts is Blair's use of the report, which he has sexed up to serve his own purposes. He turned the whole exercise into a selfjustifying platform of political advantage ... Breathtaking vanity."

Max Hastings, Daily Mail: "We went to war to defeat a threat to our safety which has since proved to be tosh. Yet Butler is content to allow the vendors of this tosh to keep their jobs until index-linked pension time. It stinks, and could only happen in Britain."

Tom Mangold: "That 45-minute claim should have been examined 15 times over - and the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee should have said to the Prime Minister, 'I know it looks sexy, I know it looks great, but we cannot include that in our dossier.'"

Robin Cook, former foreign secretary: "The real issue is not how did the September dossier come to be written, but whether the Prime Minister and Government really believed in it."