The hilarious decision to suppress the Chilcot report into the Iraq war ( Have I got this right? Is it being delayed on the grounds that the truth has to be kept quiet during an election?) reminds me of an embarrassing fact. I still shudder to recall how close I came to supporting the Iraq war. I wasn’t even slightly persuaded by what seemed to me to be obvious drivel about weapons of mass destruction, and ludicrous claims about Iraqi involvement in the attack on New York City in September 2001.

The thing that attracted me was the idea that the abandoned British imperial mission might in some way be revived, that the USA might actually attempt to do what it had always until now refused to do, and to be a true successor to the lost Pax Britannica. This I now recognise as a sentimental nonsense, but at the time, I hadn’t really grasped just how utterly different the American Empire was from the British. I’d begun to, but I had nowhere near worked out the equations which I’ve since discovered. Nor had I properly taken in the Blair view that national sovereignty was over and done with.

I’d seen it in practice in Kosovo, and realised there was something wrong with it. But it’s astonishing, long back, to realise that I hadn’t fully grasped what that something was.

An American acquaintance, luckily for me, persuaded me out of this silliness ( I can still remember the exact table in the exact Starbucks where she did so). Her impassioned defence of her own country’s original belief in avoiding foreign entanglements, and her justifiably low opinion of the then leaders of the USA, made me realise I was being frivolous.

Here is my own Hitchcot Report, a record of what I thought and wrote at the time, leaving in the bits where I was wrong, but illustrating that it really wasn’t very hard to be right at the time. What amazed me then and amazed me now was how many intelligent people were wholly fooled by such a weak and feeble prospect.

In September 2002, after a visit to Washington DC, I had written this account of the USA’s then posture:

‘THE most popular song in America just now has this message for anyone who attacks the land of the free: 'You'll be sorry that you messed with the USA. We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way'.



Toby Keith's crude country and western doggerel has the Statue of Liberty shaking her fist at her foes, and warns potential aggressors of what lies in store for them - 'It'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you, brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue.'

For many millions of Americans that is pretty much all the argument they need for doing anything they like to their enemies, especially for the invasion of Iraq that is coming as surely and unstoppably as the approaching autumn. It is also a fairly accurate description of what is going to happen to Baghdad, probably some time in November.



Here in the north-east of the USA at this wonderfully beautiful season it is impossible to look up at the late summer sky without imagining, unbidden, the scenes of fire and death that took place a year ago, right in the middle of an optimistic, bright morning. It is also impossible to convey just how angry and hurt Americans still are.



In the midst of peace, pleasure and prosperity, it is strangely like wartime.



The flags are still everywhere, flying from cars, stuck on the windows of tube trains. Children's books and toys celebrate the nobility of the Manhattan firemen.



Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz appear together in patriotic TV commercials urging their fellow citizens to make the country less dependent on foreign oil by using low-energy lightbulbs.



There is a new ministry in charge of 'Homeland Security' and hardly anybody finds this 1984 language even slightly disturbing. The only fuss is over whether its employees will have full union rights.



We in Britain might like to feel superior, having been repeatedly blitzed and bombed for most of the last century by experts from the Kaiser to the IRA and already knowing that death can come suddenly out of a seemingly friendly sky. But Americans, or at least their ancestors, came here to get away from all that sort of thing and to be left in peace by the rest of the planet.



They don't want any politics, or war or enemies, just to get on with their lives. A place they thought was safe has been violated for reasons they do not understand, and would not accept if they did.



It is worth pointing out that a similar rage and fury gripped the people of England when, in December 1914, German warships shelled Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool, wantonly killing 137 people and wounding 600.



Until that day we too had assumed for centuries that we were out of our enemies' reach. Since then, we never have been and never again can be, but America is desperate to return to the fear-free world that existed before September 11, 2001.



This unrealistic yearning helps to explain the planned attack on Iraq.



It is entirely illogical. The arguments for it are feeble and inconsistent.



About the only thing which recommends the anti-Iraq scheme is the fact that Nelson Mandela, Tony Benn and Archbishop Rowan Williams are all against it.



Its effects on the world economy and its long-term impact on the vexed Middle East are quite impossible to predict, but the potential risks are at least as great as the possible gains.



Yet in America none of this seems to matter at all. The most important thing to understand about this war is that it has already been decided upon, not exactly as a response to September 11 but as a sort of demonstration that nobody else should ever try any such thing ever again, perhaps made more urgent by the failure so far to find Osama Bin Laden.



President Bush has committed himself to it so deeply that to give up now would be to destroy himself.



He simply cannot afford to be the second President Bush who failed to finish Saddam Hussein. Saddam's taunts and jeers would make sure that he lost the 2004 election, now coming up over the horizon.



This not to say that he is making war for votes. He is too decent a man to behave in such a fashion. But September 11 turned him into an entirely different person from the one who was elected in November 2000.



In most ways, he has not been an impressive President. Apart from some mild tax cuts he has no achievements to his name. Nor did he show any great mettle when the blow actually fell on New York. The pitiful panic and hunched indecision of the first few hours after the Twin Towers fell were dreadful to watch. But Americans eventually willed him into a sort of greatness because he was the only President they had - and in time of peril the President is Commander-in-Chief and becomes the father of his country, a focus of loyalty and respect beyond any criticism.



For the moment, they forgot his failures and inwardly urged him to do better, much as the wartime British urged poor, stammering King George VI to find his tongue.



In a way, it worked. Told repeatedly that he is a man of destiny, he has begun to act like one. This factor is probably far more important, now, than any need to complete what his father left undone. In fact, he seems to have fallen out with many of his father's former advisers, who are muttering that the whole thing is rash and mistaken.



So it is hard to see how the preparations can be halted or the war called off, short of some catastrophe which diverts vengeance elsewhere.



Huge ships, laden with tanks and material, are already steaming for the Gulf, under the thin pretext of an exercise in Kuwait.



The great bomb factory In St Louis, Missouri, is throbbing night and day as it turns out new weapons to replace the thousands used to churn the deserts of Afghanistan. The armed services do little else but plan the assault which is likely to begin with a series of air raids on sites where Saddam Hussein is believed to be keeping his sinister arsenals of gas and disease.



Before then, there will probably be one last UN-sponsored visit by arms inspectors, but one so aggressive and uncompromising that Saddam is almost bound to obstruct it.



While this goes on the CIA is trying to persuade Iraq's elite to desert Saddam, on the grounds that he is doomed and that those who stay at his side too long are doomed as well.



All very well, except that it will be hard to judge at exactly what point such treason will be safe.



Hitler, after all, was hanging those he thought disloyal right up to his last days in the bunker. But if there is no palace revolution then there will have to be ground war instead, probably involving up to 200,000 troops fighting their way into Iraq's cities. This is an entirely new thing. It used to be the rule that democracies never started wars. They responded when attacked or came to the aid of allies in trouble. This rule was quietly discarded so that NATO could intervene in Yugoslavia, but that was supposed to be on humanitarian grounds.



This time, the world's two oldest democracies are launching a war against a country purely because they do not like its regime. It is a dangerous precedent. China, and perhaps Russia, will watch with interest and take careful note of the arguments used.



Perhaps it will work. The idea that Iraq can be turned into a democracy is ridiculous. It is not even a proper country, just a patch on the map arranged to suit British imperial interests 80 years ago.



But it could certainly be more prosperous and happy than it is now, and less of a threat to its neighbours. Just possibly other rogue states, working on 'weapons of mass destruction', will be discouraged by the fate of Saddam Hussein.



It will certainly be a good thing to have an alternative safe source of oil, now that Saudi Arabia - which has some alarming missiles of its own - is slipping into the hands of dangerous fanatics.



America's military have a good record of success and there is no reason why they should fail.



Perhaps Saddam will not have the chance to set fire to his oilfields or bombard Tel Aviv with smallpox missiles. Perhaps the Saudis will refrain from shutting off their oil taps and turning Europe's recession into a depression. Let us hope so.



Yet even if this strange mission succeeds, it will not deal with the terrorist nests and the nurseries of Islamic fanaticism which hatched the plan to attack Manhattan.



Nor will it resolve the great conflict in Israel which is, without doubt, the pivotal issue of modern times. It may even strengthen the very forces that conspired to bring down the Twin Towers.



The American boot is aimed squarely at the wrong backside.’

I wrote those words some time before I made my mind up.

A week later I wrote :

’ THE Prime Minister is always at his most dangerous when he has that noble expression on his face. He looks as if he is thinking of the nation's destiny - but actually he is thinking of his own.



Of course there are good reasons for bombing Baghdad, as well as some pretty compelling reasons for not doing so.



But I cannot believe that Anthony Blair understands the case for or the case against.



He is simply hiding, in a false cloud of glory, from his real domestic duties - which are dull, difficult and cannot be carried out for him by the Americans. He appears to see the issue as a Weapon of Mass Distraction.



I seem to be the only person who still remembers that Mr Blair was an adult member of the anti-American pacifist organisation, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and that he tried to cover up this fact when it was exposed.



It's not as if he can plead teenage hormones or ignorance of what he was doing.



He sought to become a Labour MP when the party was an unashamed rabble of America-haters, Communist fellow-travellers and terrorist sympathisers. During the Falklands War he called for a negotiated settlement with the aggressor.



Whenever he is faced with serious threats to British interests - be it from the IRA over Ulster or from Spain over Gibraltar - he is only too willing to give in and camouflage his surrender with the name of 'peace' or 'diplomacy'.



And this character is now the apostle of war and the unswerving ally of Washington? I don't think so.



Americans may be fooled by Mr Blair's current friendship and flattery. That's their mistake. I don't see why we should be deceived any longer, given how well we know him.



If the danger is so great and so urgent, then where are the civil defence preparations? Where are the stockpiles of gas masks, the fallout shelters? Where are the other necessary and urgent precautions such an immediate threat demands?



If he wants to embroil us in a war against Iraq, then he needs to do better than this’.

******

But a few weeks earlier I had written this :

‘There is a perfectly good case for invading Iraq.



But it is not the one that is being solemnly advanced by Washington and doggedly supported by the Anthony Blair Government.



The official case is a mixture of assertion and plain twaddle. It does not produce specific evidence that Saddam Hussein is a special threat to world peace, or explain why the proven method of deterrence, effective against dictators wherever applied, will not work against him.



And it does not explain why Saddam alone must be punished for sins which many others are getting away with.



If Iraq really is developing 'weapons of mass destruction', it is joining a rather large club of unfree nations with such weapons. This includes supposed friends of the West such as Pakistan and the vast, aggressive prison state of China, which constantly menaces its tiny neighbour Taiwan and continues to crush poor Tibet, which it seized illegally half a century ago.



And then there is Iran, which is being assisted into the nuclear age by our other new friend, Russia. There are no plans for any Anglo-American wars against these countries.



More embarrassing still, both Britain and America, not to mention the UN Security Council, are on record as being firmly against anyone attacking Baghdad to prevent Saddam developing such weapons.



When, in June 1981, Israeli jets destroyed Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor on the grounds - now widely accepted - that it was part of a nuclear bomb programme, the then Mrs Margaret Thatcher condemned the action 'totally and utterly'. The then Labour leader, Michael Foot, described the Israeli action as a ' terrible event'. Unusually, Mr Foot found himself on the same side as US President Ronald Reagan, who issued his own thunderous denunciation.



As for Saddam being an especially wicked dictator, the whole Middle East is packed with unpleasant, repressive regimes.



Syria, where Mr Blair was recently humiliated by the dynastic despot Bashar Assad, is a nasty anti-Semitic secret police state which massacres its own citizens.



Libya, where Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien has been exchanging coy smiles with Colonel Gadaffi, is an arsenal of terror with many prisoners of conscience in its gruesome jails.



Iran, where Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last year went in search of friends, uses flogging and stoning as official penalties.



Saddam is not especially distinguished in this rough neighbourhood. He does not even force Iraqi women to wear burkas. On the contrary, his is one of the least Islamic regimes in the Middle East and Iraq is one of the most Westernised of all Arab countries.



Consistency and principle are hard to find in foreign policy. That is because proper, effective foreign policy is based mainly upon who has whose thumb on whose windpipe, with the ethics invented afterwards.



As Lord Palmerston rightly said: 'Britain has no eternal friends, only eternal interests.' And those interests certainly are involved in the future of Iraq, an artificial country cynically carved from the corpse of the Ottoman Empire after the Second World War.



In those days, Iraq mattered to us because it was on the strategic road to India. We ceaselessly intervened in its politics, ruthlessly overthrowing Rashid Ali's pro-Nazi government in 1941 and keeping much influence in Baghdad until Abdul Kassem's 1958 coup. But since then it has come to matter even more because of its enormous oil reserves.



That is also why Iraq now matters to the USA. America's whole Middle East strategy is slowly falling to pieces.



Since the Thirties, when American oil companies beat off British competition for Saudi oil concessions, Washington has had a specially close relationship with Saudi Arabia.



But in 1973 the Saudi tail began to wag the American dog. Angered by American support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War of that year, the Saudis turned off the oil taps which had kept much of America going since the Second World War. Then they put up their prices, producing a recession which jammed the brakes on the whole Western world for years.



In 1975 the Saudis took control of the oilfields, until then owned by a US consortium. But far from making the two countries enemies, the changes sealed their friendship.



Enormously rich, Saudi Arabia was persuaded to spend its new oil wealth in the US, on American construction companies, on educating its elite in America (21 of the 30 ministers in the Saudi government have American university degrees) - and, of course, on weapons, military bases and aircraft.



In return, the Saudis won much influence in Washington. Their longstanding ambassador there, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, became part of the 'permanent government' which carries on running America whoever is in the White House or on Capitol Hill.



America's pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians may have something to do with this.



Americans preferred to ignore the truth about their Arab ally, that it is a deeply backward and oppressive country - secretive, corrupt and largely under the control of Muslim fanatics who hate, mistrust and despise the West. They knew little about the Wahabbi sect which helped to create Osama bin Laden. The Saudis they met were Westernised, English speaking, American-educated and smooth.



Saudi Arabia was generous to US charities - backing Nancy Reagan's anti-drugs campaign with a million dollars and similarly helping Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy.



Amazed by the oil embargo in 1973, Washington was even more astonished when the realisation dawned that most of the hijackers on September 11 were Saudi citizens and that Saudi Arabia was the throbbing heart of much of the anti-American hatred in the Muslim world.



Since then the fear has been growing that Saudi Arabia, as Iran once did, will soon become openly anti-American. Nobody in the US capital was surprised by the Saudi refusal to allow US bases there to be used in a new attack on Iraq. America has for many months been discreetly transferring forces to Qatar, on the assumption that the special relationship was coming to an end.



This week's leak of a Pentagon briefing describing Saudi Arabia as the 'kernel of evil' suggests that the American establishment is readying itself for a showdown with the Saudis.



The briefing, given by the respected Rand Corporation think-tank, suggested that the overthrow of Saddam and the installation of a friendly regime in Iraq would end US dependence on Saudi oil.



This process has already begun. The US is quietly reducing its Saudi crude oil imports. The Saudi share of US imports was 24 per cent in 1991. It is now down to 16 per cent, not much more than the US imports from Venezuela. Interestingly, America already imports nearly five per cent of its crude oil from Iraq - a figure which could be hugely increased if a friendly government sat in Baghdad.



Having lost Iran and now seeming likely to lose Saudi Arabia, having lost patience with Yasser Arafat and grown closer to Israel than at any time, the USA badly needs a new and reliable friend and a new base from which to exert influence and project power in this dangerous zone.



As an old-fashioned imperial and strategic exercise for the benefit of the civilised West, an invasion of Iraq makes perfect sense. What a pity nobody is prepared to admit publicly that this is what we are doing.

******

By the 29th December that year, I had pretty well made up my mind:

‘I WISH I could support the coming attack on Iraq. I have tried to convince myself that it is a good idea.



I think America is mostly a force for good, while I believe Iraq is a hateful political slum. I loathe being on the same side as all those dim, thoughtless Leftists who are always against war, however necessary, or against America, however right she is.



But this time the arguments in favour of war are feeble. Saddam Hussein is not remotely comparable to Hitler, nor is tiny Iraq anything like Nazi Germany in the Thirties.



I particularly dislike the revival of the expression 'Desert Rats' to describe our troops. This honourable name belongs to another generation who won real battles against an enemy who could have beaten them.



If Saddam has dangerous weapons, he can be deterred from using them, as he has been for the past decade. His regime is repulsive, but no more so than that of our new friend Bashar Assad in Syria, sponsor and shelterer of some of the world's worst terrorists.



Some of my fellow conservatives have foolishly treated this conflict as an extension of the Cold War and accused its critics of being 'useful idiots' who are tools of the Arab lobby. These charges simply won't stick to the many conservative patriots, like me, who have been left leaderless by the Tory Party's uncritical support of Anthony Blair.



The best argument for the attack is that it will end Western reliance on the nasty Saudi regime for oil, and perhaps remake the Middle East. If I thought this would actually happen, I would favour it. Oil is essential for the continued existence of civilisation, and it is bad luck for the world that so much of it is in the Middle East.



BUT America's silly hatred of the British Empire destroyed Middle East stability half a century ago, and there is no sign that Washington will take up the burden of governing this region directly, the only permanent solution to its problems.



Instead, it plans some sort of puppet regime, allegedly democratic, which will fail as such things always do. Iraq, an invented country, cannot be democratic because there is no such thing as an Iraqi people, just a squabbling collection of rival groups trapped inside an artificial border.



America's refusal to become a proper imperial power has been a tragedy for the world.



Rather than openly and honestly imposing its will, the USA has manipulated and meddled, making and unmaking regimes all over the world by devious means. It has often been dirty and bloody, and - worse - has seldom worked very well.



The other good argument for attacking Iraq is that the soppy pro-surrender Left oppose it.



If Tony Benn and Archbishop Rowan Williams are both against a cause, then there must be something attractive about it. But if the simpleton Left really thought about this war, they would support it. It is an attack on national sovereignty, something they despise.



And the principle behind it is dangerous to the long-term independence of this country.



For at the heart of it is the idea that if the USA does not like a country's government, it is entitled to change it at will.



National sovereignty and independence are conditional on Washington's approval.



The technique is mainly used against pariah governments which nobody loves. The pressure placed on Yugoslavia and Serbia was outrageous. But nobody cared, because Slobodan Milosevic was so indefensible. Yet there are other rulers as wicked as Milosevic or Saddam who are left untouched.



The misdeeds of these two were the pretext for intervention, not the reason for it.



How could this affect us in Britain? Actually, America has already intervened ruthlessly in our internal affairs. In the mid-Nineties I remember arguing in Washington with a senior White House official about President Clinton's interference in Ulster on the side of Sinn Fein and the IRA. Clinton was determined to make Gerry Adams respectable, allowing him to enter the US against fierce protests from London. I told the official this was intolerable meddling in the affairs of a sovereign ally.



She replied that really it was intended to resolve the Irish issue, and to bring 'peace'.



Didn't I think that Washington was entitled to involve itself in the Yugoslavia mess, to help bring about peace there? If so, what was wrong with getting involved in Northern Ireland?



SHE regarded this as a clinching argument.



When I retorted that Britain was a stable, ancient democracy with the rule of law, not remotely comparable with the ex-communist zone of despair in the Balkans, she fell silent. This was not because she had changed her mind (look what happened) but because she suddenly realised the implication of what she had said.



As far as she was concerned, Britain and Yugoslavia were equally subject to the whim and will of the West Wing of the White House.



Our surrender to the IRA in April 1998 was largely forced upon us by the USA for its own domestic reasons.



Given Washington's longstanding support for a united Europe, it is quite possible future American pressure will be brought on us to scrap the pound, abandon what is left of our border controls, or even to merge what remains of our Armed Forces beneath some European command.



The conservatism of Washington has little in common with British conservatism, and anyway, voting trends in the US are likely to put the radical Leftist Hillary Clinton in the White House in 2008. Then we will find out just what dreadful precedents we have set by supporting this war now.’

******

By the 9th February 2003, I was completely sure:

‘IF we go to war I shall not stop criticising this folly. Our troops will not be fighting for this country, but for another country and against Britain's interests.



Before the bombs start to fall I will try one last time to deal with the feeble, stumbling case for attacking Iraq.



Yes, Saddam Hussein is a dictator. So is Jiang Zemin, the Chinese leader, recently welcomed here on a State visit and guarded from protesters by British police.



Jiang Zemin's regime constantly threatens its neighbour Taiwan, illegally occupies Tibet, imprisons hundreds of thousands in its Lao Gai concentration camps and possesses weapons of mass destruction by the megaton, plus rockets to deliver them.



China is a much more potent threat to peace and stability than Iraq, and the free world should be taking firmer steps to deter and contain it. But America constantly appeases China. So do we.



Talking of appeasement, the pro-war faction claims that those who oppose the war are the same as those who would not stand up to Hitler in the Thirties. This is historical rubbish. When Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, the democracies did nothing. They did nothing when he swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia.



When Saddam invaded Kuwait, the West stood up to him, and threw him out. He is most unlikely to do it again, and if he does he knows he will be thrown out again. So why should he? Nobody is appeasing him.



If we know that Saddam has developed dangerous weapons, then we can simply destroy them, as Israel did when it bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981. No war followed though, stupidly, both President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher condemned this wise and sensible act.



This war is part of an ill-thought-out American plan to obtain a strategic foothold in the Middle East. This will only work if America stays in Iraq for decades, and even then will be very hard to manage.



Yet it is already clear that Washington does not intend to hang around in Baghdad any longer than it has to, and that British troops will be given the job of policing the 'democracy' which is supposed to appear by magic once Saddam has gone.



Why? We couldn't afford to do this in 1921, when we invented Iraq by drawing some lines on a map, and we certainly cannot now. In return for this humiliating role, what do we get?



America has already forced us to surrender to the IRA. It wants to shove us into a European federal state. If we are such valued allies, why are we treated like this? It is time we had a Government which stood up for this country's independence.

*********

On the 2nd March, I attacked the Tories for supporting the war:

‘THE worst government in modern British history is trying to hustle this country into a stupid and unpopular war which has nothing-to do with us and is against our interests.



It hopes to get away with this even though our armed forces are not fit to fight, thanks to years of neglect and cheeseparing.



So what does the Opposition do at the moment of truth, when the ground is trembling beneath New Labour's feet and there is a real possibility of unhorsing this ghastly regime?



In the most important vote to take place in the Commons for decades, the Tory Party backs the Government.



I just cannot understand why so many Conservatives are in favour of this Left wing war.



Why don't they make the connections? Mr Blair wanted to disarm this country in the face of the Soviet threat, a real threat from a monstrous and bloodstained tyranny. Mr Blair was against retaking the Falklands. Mr Blair has handed Ulster over to rule by terrorist factions. Mr Blair is even now trying to sell Gibraltar to Spain. And, above all, he aches to abolish our national independence and liberty by scrapping the pound and placing us beneath the dingy shadow of a Brussels constitution.



Yet suddenly this serial surrender merchant, appeaser and anti-British defeatist is hot for war against Iraq, a nation which, for all its many faults, poses precisely no threat to this country.



The truth is that attacking Iraq appeals to Mr Blair because it is not in British interests. It is a new kind of liberal imperialism which ultimately threatens the whole idea that countries are free to govern themselves as they see fit.



And what about these vague and grandiose promises of a new democratic Iraq? For Heaven's sake, the Labour Party still hasn't managed to introduce democracy in its one-party heartlands of Scotland and the North East. How likely is it Mr Blair can impose it on Basra?



These excellent arguments have been left to rust by a Tory Party which seems to think war is conservative. Wrong a thousand times. War, for the past century, has been the handmaid and herald of state control, Socialism, inflation and high taxation, doing limitless damage to the Church, marriage and the family, stability, order and morality.’

Finally, as it began, I wrote on 23rd March 2003:

‘WHY should the start of fighting mean the end of thinking? Just because Anthony CND Blair has sent British forces into danger, why should I or anyone else stop saying he was wrong to do so?



Does this mean that any Prime Minister can escape criticism by going to war, however foolish that war is?



Surely, it was a great deal more demoralising for British troops to be forced to stop fighting our real enemies in the IRA just when they had them on the run? Surely, it was more demoralising when Mr CND Blair set up the Bloody Sunday inquiry?



And, by the way, I find it pretty demoralising that President Bush has just shaken hands with Gerry Adams, which makes his treacly exhortations about the 'War on Terror' look fairly empty.



Anyway, I think our troops are big enough to cope with the fact that not everyone agrees with their mission. Their job is to finish it as efficiently as possible, despite Mr CND Blair's failure to equip them properly. I pray they will come back safely and quickly.



This is not a war for national survival in which we all have to pull together and hush our doubts or be subjugated.



Patriotic British people who believe in fair play should be against this war. Don't leave protest to the dimwit Left, who are against all wars without distinction. Conservatives in the past have tended to rally to the flag without a second thought. But with Mr CND Blair in charge, that era is over. He loathes Britain and has never knowingly supported a war fought, or an action taken, in British national interests. He is keen on this war because he likes the new multicultural, Left wing, United States.



People who say that George W. Bush is 'Right wing' have missed the point. Dear George may think he's a conservative. He may think he is a poached egg for all I know. But his action has attracted the fervent support of almost every ex-Marxist power-worshipper in America and Britain. Those who used to apologise for Stalin now make excuses for Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.



They can see what Bush is not bright enough to see - that this war is wonderful for those who hate old-fashioned, traditional, special countries like this one and long to see them replaced by a classless, borderless wilderness.



Like them, Mr CND Blair is delighted that the White House doctrine of war spells death for the old-fashioned independent nation.



As of Thursday night, centuries-old rules of war and diplomacy went into the dustbin. From now on, any big nation can invade another country because it does not like its government. If challenged, that big nation can turn round and say - and they will - that the USA did it to Iraq.



Well, the USA may not always be top nation. China is training hard for the job. But even if the USA keeps its unique position, it is no longer the home of liberty that it used to be.



It is busy dismantling the great constitution which kept it free. It now holds prisoners incommunicado without trial, like any despotic nation, and its public men openly discuss legalising torture.



That is why I devote most of this column to spreading doubt about this invasion, in the hope that the Iraq war is the last such folly, instead of being the first of dozens.’

********

And on the 18th May, after my first visit to Iraq, I wrote this (it was illustrated by a picture taken by my friend and colleague Michael Thomas of a skull recently exhumed from a mass grave near Munahil, south of Baghdad, containing the remains of Iraqi Shias massacred by Saddam after they rose (on the urging of the West) against the then dictatorship at the end of the 1991 war. Mr Blair had been saying about this time that such asks graves justified the invasion and overcame criticism of it :

‘Each evening, as night falls on Baghdad, the Middle Ages return. This great modern city has been stripped of almost all the essentials of civilisation. By day it is not quite so obvious. But when the electricity shuts down for the night and there is only moonlight to see by, you understand that the modern world we think of as normal is built on a very thin crust.



All across the vast cityscape, residents are sawing down palm trees to build barricades across their streets to keep out the feared looters, or sitting behind their front doors with hastily bought firearms hoping they will not have to use them.



When looters are detected in any district, the besieged householders let off bursts of bullets into the sky to proclaim that they are not defenceless. Those without weapons must submit or be shot. Iraqis, once one of the most civilised and educated peoples in the Middle East, have gone back to the ways of cavemen.



The Anglo-American attack on Iraq was supposed to be a liberation, and perhaps one day it will turn out to be one. But for most people here it has meant a return to Year Zero. Everything that made Iraq a country has gone. The currency swoops up and down in value and satchels full of dinars are needed to pay for anything important.



There is no law to speak of. The schools do not know what to teach or who should teach it. The frontiers are controlled by foreigners, if they are controlled at all. All the national TV channels have disappeared. The telephones are all dead.



Most medicines are unobtainable.



And in the world's second greatest oil producer, mile-long queues mark every petrol station - and the fuel on offer is a filthy, rancid-smelling muck which wrecks engines and fills the air with noxious clouds.



There is no gas for cooking, the tap water is tainted with sewage. Many people have not been paid for weeks and are not even sure that their jobs or businesses still exist or will ever reappear. Imagine what it must be like to be the parent of small children in such surroundings. Many Iraqis are haggard with worry and lack of sleep.



And yet in their guarded compounds, where the power always works and air conditioning cools the 95-degree heat, the American rulers of the city continue to show the clueless complacency that has marked their occupation since it began. The big men ride about in armoured convoys, machine-gunners fore and aft glaring suspiciously about them, too scared of the people they have liberated to get out, walk and see for themselves.



The real reason for the mess is that Washington knew nothing about Iraq - and cared even less - before it attacked. If anyone in the American capital knew any Iraqi history before they decided to take over the country, they have shown no sign of it.



Having heard of the Baath Party for the first time about eight weeks ago, they now rage righteously against it as if it were the root of all evil. Last week, General Tommy Franks went on the radio and dissolved it, the act of a conqueror, not a liberator - and one he has no power to enforce, as we shall see.



On Thursday, the new American Viceroy, Paul Bremer, said that he, too, planned to 'extirpate' the wicked Baath Party, even though General Franks had already dissolved it.



Actually, the only thing he has extirpated is his forerunner, the ill-fated Jay Garner, who had the rotten luck to be in charge of Iraq when everything started to go wrong and has been sacked to encourage the others.



As things stand, Mr Bremer may not be able to do much better. He was boasting last week about the increased number of patrols on the streets, the arrests made and the fact that he now has two criminal courts working and has reopened (or should that be reclosed?) two of Baghdad's prisons.



But all Iraqis know that the streets are mainly unprotected. And they also know that Mr Bremer will have to bring back the Baathists and the old Saddam machine if he wants to do anything about it.



I went to the Baghdad police academy, where American military police and members of Saddam's old police force co-operate nervously and set out on their inadequate joint beats, camouflaged Humvees and blue and white squad cars in convoy. They are hampered by the fact that very few American soldiers speak a word of Arabic, and also because the two groups do not really trust each other.



There I spoke to police colonel Jasim Mohamed, a 15-year veteran of the city force. Yes, he reluctantly admits, he was a member of the Baath Party, along with two million other Iraqis who had to join if they wanted to get a college education or a decent career.



He says, as everybody now has to say: 'Of course we are happy Saddam has gone.' He adds, as everybody now has to add: 'Of course I want democracy.' But how can anyone be sure he means it?



So far, out of the 30,000 members of the Baghdad police force, only 4,000 have come back to work and there are 24 patrol cars to cover a city about the size of Birmingham. There used to be 2,000. The great extirpator, Mr Bremer, may have to eat his words about Baathists if he wants a police force back in Baghdad before Christmas, since I would guess most of the missing men are Baath Party members.



For now, all he has is a ludicrous compromise, explained to me by Captain Steve Caruso, a forceful soldier from Philadelphia who is actually trying to get the occupation to work.



'The Iraqi police want to be armed with Kalashnikovs, as they used to be, but handing out 10,000 AK-47s to Iraqi police officers is not the right answer right now,' he insisted.



Not surprisingly, the inadequate US force in the city, around 15,000 battle-weary men, do not like the idea of an organised, disciplined force of armed Iraqis. So instead the Iraqi police are allowed to carry their submachine guns in the boots of their cars, and can only get them out if they are attacked.



Since untold numbers of criminals and looters already have such weapons, purchased at arms markets for a few dollars, it is easy to see that this will not do much good.



Nor will the aggressive but rare American patrols, like the one I saw suddenly pile out of their truck and kick and punch a group of Iraqis to the ground because they suspected them of selling weapons.



It certainly does not help the pitiful shopkeeper I found at the gate of Saddam-Hussein's old palace complex, feebly trying to explain his plight.



This is now the new seat of power and there is always a knot of people gathered there trying to make contact with the occupiers.



The shopkeeper, Mahmoud Namdar, had his electronic goods shop plundered by armed thieves and bought his own gun to protect his stock from robbers. But an American patrol happened by, saw him and roughly took away his weapon, though he has only one leg and cannot even run after those who steal from him. Now he fears he is defenceless and will lose everything.



After my interpreter had explained this to a brusque soldier, the soldier said to Mahmoud: 'You will get your goods back. We will catch the thieves.' Then he turned away. As he made this unbelievable promise, he did not even try to find out the man's name or address.



Many people are already starting to wish the Americans would just go. In the meantime, they want us to bring back the few certainties they used to have. As I walked through Najaf, a middle-aged man in a fez, Nazal Shamsah, stormed up to me to ask - in English - why it was that he could not now get the medicine he badly needs for his heart disease. 'We're not your enemies, but your friends, help us, please,' he pleaded.



If the Americans had studied Britain's long-ago experience in Baghdad, they might have learned that democracy cannot simply be unpacked from crates and set up in a place like this. They might have learned that if you take over someone's country you have to use the old institutions and elites, even if you do not like them.



When Britain took over the region from the Turks in 1920, we too tried to make Iraq a democracy, but found things worked better when we pulled the strings of government ourselves, working through the local elite.



In 1932 we even pretended that Iraq was independent when in truth London was still very much in charge.



Not until the bloody coup of 1958, and overthrow of the monarchy, did we finally lose our influence.



Of course, we preferred not to be too obvious. The British ambassador had to tell the King of Iraq to please stop coming to the embassy, and instead summon him to the palace, so that it at least looked as if he was really in charge.



We were also ruthless about keeping order. When there was looting in Baghdad in 1941, after British troops had overthrown the pro-Nazi dictator Rashid Ali Kailani, we swiftly hanged several looters and restored peace. But these days, while it is all right to bomb innocent people for their own good, it is apparently wrong to hang guilty ones for the general benefit. So the nightly crackle of gunfire continues.



American sloganising about democracy and liberation also misses the point that most Iraqis are Shia Muslims, many of whom fervently desire an Islamic republic. What is more, the militant Shias are organised and effective among the urban poor, where their strength is concentrated.



I went to the hospital in what used to be Saddam City, a desperate and squalid quarter of Baghdad so wretched that its children make a thin living by scavenging through the stinking rubbish heaps.



This scene is next door to the brand new looters' market, where a mad selection of stolen goods, from air-conditioning units and steel cupboards to crutches and wheelchairs, goes on sale each morning amid clouds of flies.



The hospital is a small patch of calm amid this seething, filthy, lawless place because the local Shia clerics have taken it over and set up their own armed militia, which keeps away marauders. And the same thing has happened all over the Shia-dominated south of the country as the clerics have fanned out from their central college in the holy city of Najaf, bringing authority and order.



If you speak to them, they will smile and say they have no ambitions to run the country. No, of course they do not want an Islamic republic like Iran.



They want a nice democracy where all can share.



This is the official line, laid down by the great Shia leader Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim when he returned after a long exile last week. So why is there an organisation - well funded and competent - called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq?



Does Hakim, who attracts the sort of crowds only rock stars can expect in the West, really mean it when he says his ambitions are modest?



I don't think so. Outside the majestic golden-domed shrine of Hussein in Kerbala, 24-year-old Mohammad Karim said: 'We want Hakim as President of Iraq. We would like to see Islamic law.' When he said this should include a ban on alcohol as well as the shrouding of women, most of the crowd which had gathered round agreed, though one other young man called out that alcohol should be a matter of choice. He may be in for a disappointment.



Further south, in Basra, Christian-run alcohol shops have already been smashed up by Shia militants flexing their Muslim muscle.



The real agenda of the Shia clerics was revealed by preachers at the Saddam City mosque before Hakim arrived.



They also demanded the head-to-toe veiling of women, the banning of alcohol and Islamic control of the schools. This would be misery for millions of secular Iraqis, but democracy could actually bring it about.



As I spoke to Karim, worshippers at the ancient shrine were constantly carrying coffins in and out, chanting prayers as they did so. The crude boxes contained the shrivelled, pitiful remains of Shias which had just been dug from the mass grave at Munahil, near the ancient site of Babylon.



I had earlier visited this grisly scene. It was, of course, disgusting though not as bad as I had feared or as some reports have suggested.



There was, for instance, no stench, since this was evidence of murders 12 years ago, not last week.



Laid out among the wasteland were the remnants of what had once been hundreds of people: brown bones, hanks of hair, skulls still half-covered in earth and bits of cloth assembled into shockingly small plastic bags.



They had been Shias who followed Western calls to rise against Saddam in 1991, were abandoned by us, massacred by Saddam and cast, bound and blindfolded, into pits.



Some of them, judging from the scraps of synthetic cloth, had obviously been women.



Mothers, sisters, brothers searched among these wretched remnants for identity cards or other proof that these were the bodies of their lost loved ones which could now be given decent burial.



Azaar Husain Jasim, hollow-faced and shrouded in black, had found what was left of her murdered brother, Abdullah, including a disintegrating Koran and an army ID card. Now 24, she still remembers the night Saddam's men came for her brother and dragged him away.



She was bitter but not emotional, saying only: 'We are a land of civilisations and religions, and the monster Saddam came among us.



America saved us from him, and I thank America.' America also seemed thankful for the discovery of this site. Just around the corner from the hellish pit and the piles of bones stood a US Marine public affairs officer, quietly and courteously offering help to any journalists who happened to want any. I learned later that Britain's Prime Minister had told MPs that this mass grave ought to end the doubts of those who opposed the war.



As one who opposed the war and has seen the grave, I would say it does no such thing. These corpses are in any case the result of earlier half-hearted Western meddling in Iraq, and I got the impression the Allies saw them as a useful diversion from the fact that no gas or germ weapons have yet been found. I 'discovered' every time doubts are raised about weapons of mass destruction. There is no shortage of them. As Samir, my interpreter, said to me: 'It used to be said that everywhere you dig in Iraq you will find either oil or antiquities.



Now you will find corpses.' I have never seen anywhere like this before and honestly hope never do again. Everything makes the mind churn at the ghastliness of the past and the uncertainty of the future.



Perhaps the most telling scene of all was the ruined school, half-buried in broken glass, where the privileged children of Republican Guards learned to do their sums by counting tanks, and drew little pictures of children holding rifles to please their teachers. It will never reopen.



Now children all across Iraq are in tears as their teachers - under new masters - tell them to rip the pictures of Saddam from their schoolbooks.



The breach of trust is awful in a culture where the young still respect their elders and revere their teachers.



The smaller children really did believe the fairy tales they were told about Saddam the wise and benevolent uncle, much as Russians felt about Stalin. Now they feel cheated and bereft.



Their parents, fearing that their own offspring might accidentally denounce them, never dared tell them the truth - that the smiling leader they were taught to adore turned out to be a monster.



But the smarter Americans realise that there is danger if they are the ones tearing down Saddam's image.



Major Patrick Vessels, who keeps an eye on Baghdad's schools, says the United States has to be careful not to replace one dictator with another.



'We're not discouraging them from tearing out pictures of Saddam, but we're not dictating it,' he said. 'The trouble is that school heads are used to being dictated to. They are paralysed when they are given autonomy.



They just don't know what to do with freedom.' His words could be the epitaph for this whole enterprise. Lawless Baghdad yearns for authority to stop crime and restore power, fuel and water. Poor Muslims turn to their mullahs, who at least offer certainty among the swirling chaos. In the north, Kurds once again hope for a state of their own, even though they know that the chances are that their hopes will be betrayed as they always have been before.



It is all very well tearing down the statues of Saddam or scribbling on the ten thousand images of his nasty face. His power was so complete that without him an entire society has simply ceased to function and may well be headed into the darkness.



Did we know what we were doing when we started this? Do we know now? As the power fails again for the tenth time since I began writing this report, I rather doubt it.’