By Hugh Muir
4 February 2010
The Guardian

Truly, Tony Blair is not overburdened with friends when it comes to Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, but still he can rely on Prospect magazine. The latest edition stands against the general Blair-baiting trend with an article insisting Tony did not lie about WMD, because "he, like the world's intelligence agencies, believed Saddam had WMD". In fact, some Prospect writers go further, and seem to think Saddam did have WMDs, after all: Prospect books editor Tom Chatfield wrote a long piece for the magazine in 2008, suggesting that Russian Spetsnaz troops spirited Saddam's chemical and biological weapons to Syria just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But then, as Solomon Hughes points out in the Lobster, the magazine specialising in researching the secret state, Prospect itself has pretty good connections to the security services: John Scarlett junior, son of MI6 boss John Scarlett, worked as an intern at Prospect in late 2007. He got the job after Prospect ­editor David Goodhart had a few ­dinners and seminars with the men from MI6.