How do you deny a transcript, Mr. Straw?

The Guardian reports there's a transcript making the rounds of NATO that details the conversation had by Misters Powell and Straw in which they worry about the shoddy intelligence Mr. Powell then presented to the UN Security Council which leaves one to wonder...just when does a crime become a crime nowadays? And I wonder if Mr. Straw is still maintaining he had no doubts?

Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw and Colin Powell expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government circles where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into supporting the Iraq war.

A document known as the "Waldorf transcripts" - after the New York hotel where the US secretary of state was staying before making a crucial speech to the UN security council earlier this year - is described by an official of one Nato country as "extremely useful".

In another article the Guardian reports Powell was so disturbed he assembled a secret team to review the information which apparently was the work of a team Wolfowitz heads and has been mentioned here before...OSP...Office of Special Plans...

They certainly are. It reminds me of a ridiculous old slam...the one that went "Well aren't you special"..

If you want to read one of the best rants I've read in a while go here. This is how it begins;

The first problem - an old problem, not a new one - is that too many of his foes think Tony Blair tells porkies in a jam. That's been a Tory frontbench descant for six years or more. How can a man who supposedly doesn't know his wife is blowing half-a-million of their money on a couple of Bristol flats via a convicted conman be trusted to tell the truth about weapons of mass destruction? See the smirks as this holy roller loses his road map and lands in a ditch.

Update: Mr. Straw 'did not deny some such discussion took place, saying merely that he would be very surprised if such a transcript emerged.'