On the eve of the publication of the Hutton inquiry report into the circumstances surrounding the death of UK government scientist David Kelly, this BASIC Report provides a timely update and summary of the evidence that has been accumulated by the US inspectors in Iraq and from other public sources over the past eight months. The evidence confirms that US and British forces were led into battle on spurious grounds.

The report also attempts to shed light on the reasons for this: why did the US and UK governments exaggerate? Or did they themselves misunderstand what went before? Were they themselves misled by available pre-war intelligence on Iraq's WMD capability?