Iain Macwhirter might be right when he says (February 4) the proliferation of inquiries/cover-ups surrounding Iraq may bore people into not really caring about their outcomes - but these increasingly desperate Blair fudges start to look more and more like the frantic rearguard actions they really are. Each attempt to fob us off simply begs more questions - which ultimately must be answered.

Everything that is happening in Iraq - the suicide bombings, faction fighting, political assassinations, looting, murderous attacks on troops and police - was comprehensively predicted during the months when every rational voice urging Blair to work with the UN, and abide by international law, was ignored.

He was thirled to Bush and his oil-greedy cabal of extreme right-wing neo-cons, and the WMD chimera was drafted in to lend, as Gilbert and Sull-ivan have it, ''verisimilitude to an other-wise bald and unconvincing narrative''.

Can you imagine a Trojan War in which the Greek invasion army finally reaches the enemy walls only to be told: ''We had reliable intelligence that Helen had been abducted by Paris and brought here, but it turns out she has only gone to spend a couple of weeks with her sister in Ithaca. Still, King Priam of Troy is a bad man so seeing as we are all here, fully armed and raring to go, what the heck?''

The real question the public wants to see answered is: ''How did the UK become embroiled in this disastrous mess?'' - because, of course, we have to make sure it can never happen again.

The LibDems are right to refuse to dignify this latest dodgy inquiry with their presence, but the fact that Blair has been forced to perform a U-turn in 24 hours - he'd much rather stage no inquiry at all - shows that the clamour for truth is beginning to tell. Even-tually, lacking credible answers, there will have to be a real inquiry.

Hutton has damaged the BBC and put independent journalism at risk; but it has also backfired on the government, since the public - treated with such contempt in this whole sorry saga - can see it for what it really is. Blair may have been cornered into a WMD inquiry perhaps every bit as cynical and obfuscatory as Hutton, but it won't draw a line under anything.

The net result of any crude attempt to pin the blame on intelligence (whose request that the WMD analysis be ''heavily caveated'' didn't quite come over in Blair's ''Mars Attacks!'' public-consumption version) can only be more public scepticism. And as the consequences of Blair's folly unfold daily in Iraq, we'll surely continue to see more, and louder, demands for the truth, rather than the apathy which might follow even an uneasy peace.

Roy Beers,

3 Bowmont Terrace, Glasgow.

ARE we now to understand that Blair pays more attention to the views of his pal Bush than to those of the UK electorate? How long are we to suffer the antics of this buffoon? Is it not about time that some weapons of destruction by the masses were fired

at him?

Alan Sinclair,

40 Switchback Road, Bearsden.