What strikes me as relatively embarrassing is that the two Dutch secret services did in fact take the "sexed up" reports from their sister-organisations MI5 and the CIA with a grain of salt - and the Dutch reports were then consistently ignored by their own government, who preferred the Anglo-version a lot more.
A lot of this can be put on De Hoop Scheffer, though, and less on Balkenende - who comes off as incompetent, at best.
But when the question is the invasion of a foreign country, I find the absence of his involvement rather dubious.
De Hoop Scheffer, plus his Atlantacist staff at the department of Foreign Affairs, are sketched as the main architects of the policy of the Dutch government, without prominent involvement of other cabinet members. Balkenende gave De Hoop Scheffer free rein. When he set out the course, everyone fell in line behind him without much questioning, and facts were bend to fit the picture - similar as to what happened in the USA and UK.
What still might be explosive is to what regard Balkenende mis-informed Parliament.
