Are we so used to dodgy dossiers that the new evidence about the Iranian capture last year of British sailors and marines doesn't really matter? "There is no doubt," we were told a year ago, "that HMS Cornwall [the parent ship of the British naval party] was operating in Iraqi waters and that the incident itself took place in Iraqi waters." It was actually very doubtful, and Des Browne, the defence secretary, must have known it was when he made this statement to the House of Commons on June 19. Browne would have had full knowledge of the report on the incident compiled by the MoD - his own ministry - to Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, and dated April 13, two months before. And all the MoD briefers with their maps and charts and pointers knew it too. We only know its contents now because the Times obtained a copy under the Freedom of Information Act and reported on it yesterday. The MoD report explained that the demarcation line observed by the British forces between notional Iranian and Iraqi territorial waters had been drawn unilaterally by the US naval forces central command. "While it may be assumed," said the report, "that the Iranians must be aware of some form of operational boundary, the exact coordinates to the op line have not been published to Iran." So at best, the Iranians might have guessed that the "coalition forces" were observing some kind of boundary because of the pattern of those forces' operations, but they would not have known where it was - far less had any reason to accept it. What is more, this line was not even described by the MoD as a legal international boundary. It was simply a "notional territorial waters boundary" drawn on the map in the absence of any agreement with Iran. The issue is not affected by Iran's own cartographical bungling - they put out two different sets of coordinates for the incident. And the rights and wrongs of how the British and Iranian naval parties behaved and how the affair was then handled are also a separate issue. The simple fact is that the alleged location of the incident in Iraqi waters, we were told time and time again, was "indisputable" when it was actually nothing of the kind. If there wasn't a huge wave of scepticism at the time over the official British version, this just shows our continuing gullibility when the flag of national honour is being waved. We may have forgotten the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the dubious radar evidence of a North Vietnamese "attack" on American naval ships was used to legitimise intervention in Vietnam for years to come. But is the memory already so dim of that infamous February 2003 UN security council meeting, when Colin Powell, then US secretary of state, used maps and charts (partly based on British mis-intelligence) to present a wholly bogus case for the existence of WMD in Iraq? Last year's naval episode turned out to be more farcical than fatal but we, media and parliament alike, have to learn to be more sceptical at the time, not later - when it may be too late. Comment is free...