Perhaps those who bleat on about Iraq could tell me which of the following bulleted statements are untrue?

• SH had used WOMD on his own people - probably just a practice as the Nazis did in Guernica in 1936.
• He had a long history striving to develop more and bigger WOMD.
• He frequently sat on a throne in one of his palaces opposite a gigantic marble depiction of a rocket.
• He is a psychotic, paranoid mass-murderer.
• He had given every indication - including in the 90s - that he wanted and was trying to develop WOMD.
• For ten years he thwarted the international community’s inspections of his WOMD facilities.
• Nobody could be sure his WOMD had been destroyed.
• Scott Ritter (hardly a friend of the US government) states that SH was determined to retain scientists and know-how to resurrect his WOMD programme once sanctions ended.)
• Many if not most Iraqis themselves believed he had and/or was developing WOMD.
• He never fulfilled all the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire and a state of war was still technically in place.
• Only the courage and sacrifice of British and American pilots (in the face of opposition and scorn from many of this wonderful “international community”) during the 90s prevented him from massacring thousands more Kurds and Shia.
• His regime was one of the most brutal in the history of Man and thousands suffered daily under it. (Current President of Iraq: “My country was a concentration camp above the ground and a graveyard below it.”)
• We couldn’t be 100% sure he had WOMD but there was every indication that he might have had. (Eric thought this was funny ...)
• Sanctions were collapsing and would have had to be abandoned eventually before the whole population died of diesease and/or starvation.
• Had sanctions collapsed he would have been free and rich - and by all indications STILL determined to develop WOMD - and what could have stopped him?
• The thought that such a person could acquire WOMD in the Middle East is enough to make any sane person shudder.
• Before he had a chance to use them Israel would no doubt have dropped a nuclear device on Baghdad.

and so on.

Of course, all is not always black and white ..... Oil? And there was the US strategy of "making the Middle-East more democratic and safer", but that is another debate. The crux of the matter is that SH was a gigantic danger to the world. If the UN could not make up its mind to remove him instead of pussy-footing around for months and years on end with "talks" (we tried that with Hitler, remember? I believe the UN is trying it in Darfur, which I am sure is an enormous relief to those being slaughtered there.) then it had to be done unilaterally. The world will one day thank us for it, as millions of Iraqis do.

We’ll no doubt never agree on this, but in my opinion the international community’s failure to deal with him properly was one of the most flagrant acts of total insanity and criminal irresponsibility I have ever seen.

Also IMHO this will be proved by history and Blair will go down as someone of great moral courage who refused to take the easy way out by hiding behind a totally discredited UN (dictatorships on the Security Council, hysterical anti-American France, oil-for-food scandals left, right and centre) and of course by going against British public opinion.

Most people agree with you, Michael. Fine. It’s important, however, that all views are represented.

As for making us more endangered! I seem to remember Chamberlain commenting on Poland after it was invaded by Hitler by saying it was “a far away country of which we know little.” or some such Tosh. We may be now more endangered by fundamentalist loonies in our midst, but that has to be set against the danger of a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East. I’m afraid your “We are in more danger now.” smacks of: “I’m all right Jack and sod those in the firing line."

This is a global village. We cannot permit rogue regimes run by psychotic dictators to acquire nuclear weapons. Pls, no comments about the USA being a rogue regime .....

And if you think Iraq has been divisive just wait till Iran tests a nuclear device.