What Butler missed

The most blissfully satirical moment during Lord Butler’s press conference was his remark that Iraq contained ‘a lot of sand’. His point was that the fabled weapons of mass destruction might yet turn up, buried in the dunes. The former Cabinet secretary is known as a man of boundless optimism. It may be that all kinds of long-lost objects will be excavated from the desert: the plane of Amelia Earhart, perhaps, or the racehorse Shergar. If we delve deeper into this abundant sand, we may find Lord Lucan, keen to join Lord Butler in service on the red benches. But there can be hardly anyone, surely, who now believes that we will find significant quantities of weapons of mass destruction. Even Tony Blair now has the grace to admit that his principal casus belli has turned out to be a delusion, no matter how much sand there may be still to dig up in Iraq.