Persuasion has been the theme of the week. General Colin Powell took centre-stage at the United Nations, to demonstrate convincingly that Iraq is hardly co-operating fulsomely with Hans Blix's UN weapons inspectors. Tony Blair's televised encounter with Grand Inquisitor Paxman - and some even more terrifying members of the public - was both compelling television and a testament to the value of a robust democratic culture in holding those in power to account.
However, if that encounter showed the Prime Minister at his best, we have also seen his Government at its worst in the highly damaging fiasco over Downing Street's dodgy dossier of 'intelligence' about Iraq. Blair told the House of Commons that the document demonstrated 'a huge infrastructure of deception and concealment' in Iraq. Powell even cited it at the UN. Yet a dossier presented as containing prime-cuts of fresh intelligence material turns out to be nothing of the sort - but rather an internet cut-and-paste exercise largely lifted from a Californian post-graduate thesis focused on evidence from the invasion of Kuwait 13 years ago. Even worse, while typographical errors were maintained, a sprinkling of unfounded exaggerations were inserted to strengthen the claims made in the thesis.
The Government has grudgingly admitted a failure to acknowledge sources - while insisting that the information remains valid. This misses the point. Plagiarism is not the main issue. The central issue is that of public trust. At best, this episode demonstrates incompetence and the failure to oversee the most important claims which the Government puts into the public domain. At worst, a deliberate attempt to hoodwink and mislead the public will undermine trust in anything the Government says about the Iraqi threat at this vital time.
'We all have lessons to learn,' says Downing Street. But have they now realised that the sort of propaganda tricks which may have served governments well in the past are much more likely to be rumbled today? It is not only the Government which has access to the internet. Every claim made will be scrutinised more closely, and by more people, than ever before. Nothing will corrode trust more than to be caught out trying to insult the intelligence of the British public.
Tony Blair needs to take urgent steps to ensure his Government shares information in a more professional, open way. If he wants to persuade Britain of the just case for military action as a last resort, and there is a just case, his Government can hardly afford to shoot itself in the foot again.
