Independent report.

Fresh evidence has emerged that British military intelligence ran a secret operation in Iraq which authorised degrading and unlawful treatment of prisoners. Documents reveal that prisoners were kept hooded for long periods in intense heat and deprived of sleep by defence intelligence officers. They also reveal that officers running the operation claimed to be answerable only "directly to London".

Daily Mail report.

Mr Blair - who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 - also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait.

In an unprecedented move, he persuaded the committee which vets the jobs of former ministers to keep details of both deals from the public for 20 months, claiming it was commercially sensitive. The deals emerged yesterday when the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments finally lost patience with Mr Blair and decided to ignore his objections and publish the details.

News of the secret deals fuelled fresh accusations that Mr Blair is 'cashing in on his contacts' from the controversial Iraq war in what one MP called 'revolving door politics at its worst'. They will increase concerns that Mr Blair is using his role as the West's Middle East envoy for personal gain.

Richard Ingrams in the Independent.

When in doubt, shout conspiracy

It is always fair to assume that when people start referring to their opponents as conspiracy theorists they are on weak ground.

Tony Blair was doing it the other day when he dismissed critics of his Iraq policy in an interview on American TV. Sir Lawrence Freedman, a member of the Chilcot inquiry team, likewise has accused those of us who draw attention to the links between Israel and the American neocons as conspiratorial -- the irony being that those neocons have never made any attempt to conceal their loyalties. Now the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has referred in public to a "conspiracy theory" being advanced by Court of Appeal judges who have attacked MI5 for concealing their knowledge of what went on at Guantanamo.

Guardian story.

The admissions in the US covered BAE's huge £43bn al-Yamamah fighter plane sales to Saudi Arabia, and smaller deals in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in central Europe.

In the UK, the admissions cover a highly controversial sale of a military radar to poverty-stricken Tanzania, which development secretary Clare Short said at the time "stank" of corruption, but which the then prime minister, Tony Blair, forced through the cabinet.

Guardian report.

Clare Short, the former international development secretary, today accused Tony Blair of lying to her and misleading parliament in the build-up to the Iraq invasion.

Daily Telegraph report.

Hare's script is an adaptation of Murray's own book Murder in Samarkand, but the BBC insisted that the play not be uncritical. Hare has travelled to Tashkent to speak to people who knew Murray in person as part of his research.

Guardian report.

Crucial evidence to the Iraq inquiry by Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 at the time of the 2003 invasion, is likely to be heard in private.

Robert Fisk's article at the time of Blair's resignation.

... But I have to admit a moment of regret this weekend. Lord Blair is going from us. His self-serving memoirs will, of course, remind us of his God-like view of himself (and, heaven spare me, we share the same publishers) but I doubt if Chomsky's "foregrounded elements" will save him. A "foregrounded element" was something unusual, a phrase placed in such a way that it warned us of a lie to come.

...

And now I have before me Blair's repulsive "goodbye" speech to the British people, uttered at Sedgefield. Putting the country first didn't mean "doing the right thing according to conventional wisdom" (Chomsky foregrounded element: conventional) or the "prevailing consensus: (Chomsky foregrounded element: prevailing). It meant "what you genuinely believe to be right" (Chomsky foregrounded element: genuinely). Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara wanted to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Britain's oldest ally, which he assumed to be the United States. (It is actually Portugal, but no matter.) "I did so out of belief," he told us. Foregrounded element: belief.

Independent story.

A senior diplomat yesterday reacted angrily to Tony Blair's criticism of Iran during his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war -- and claimed his complaints about Tehran's interference in the post-war chaos was "a piece of spin".

Robert Fisk comments on Blair's appearance at the Chilcot enquiry in the Independent.

There was -- to use a truly vile expression of Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara yesterday -- a "binary distinction".

There was the blood that flowed over my shoes in the emergency room of a Baghdad hospital in March of 2003, the humans shrieking with phosphorous burns, the old man with the blood trickling down a handkerchief from his empty eye socket, the piles of decomposing corpses in the Baghdad mortuary, the screams -- oh yes, the shrieks and the pleadings and the animal squeals of the wounded and the dying. And then there was Lord Blair yesterday, sitting in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in his oh-so-clean business suit and his oh-so-clean red tie and his oh-so-clean white shirt and his oh-so-clean conscience. My God, that was a "binary distinction" all right. The difference between the hell of pain and the hell of blissful mendacity.

Daily Mail story. The obvious (and almost the only possible) conclusion to draw from this is that Kelly was murdered.

And now it seems that Lord Hutton has unilaterally decided that the records of his inquiry should be closed for 30 years and medical evidence for an incredible 70 years - evidence that is hotly disputed by a number of medical practitioners, who are looking to take court action to force a proper inquest to be held.