It's really irritating to agree 99% with someone and then have to take issue with the 1% by which they shoot their case (and yours) in the foot.

Speaking of the appeaseniks, Mr Knight says "WMD is the final, wafer-thin line of defence to their pathetic position". This is badly expressed, since the threat from Iraq's WMD was the overriding (and entirely correct) justification offered for invading Iraq by Mssrs. Blair and Bush - not terrorist involvement, or how horrid his regime was. To seem to trivialise the signficance of WMD in the rejoicing over Saddam's capture is mistaken, and a gift horse to the anti-war lobby.

Better to say that "the continued absence of Iraq's unaccounted-for WMD is the final, wafer-thin line of defence to their pathetic position."

Simon,

surely, that's not quite true - the reason for the war, and the thing that makes Iraq unique (thereby removing all the "but what about x..." type arguments the anti-war lot love so much) was the failure to adhere to the terms of sanctions and consequent removal from the diplomatic world (etc. etc. etc.!).

The WMD issue was but one justification which was then given further prominence by the 45 minute claim, picked up on by idiot journalists and then (and this was their big mistake) allowed to fly by politicians who concentrated on that issue, thinking they would convince people that way. Convince many they probably did, mind, but since our system of democracy doesn't rely on popular acclamation (much as people seem to think it should) they'd have been much better off giving a continued balanced account of the reasons for war. Less sexy, but better in the long run - would perhaps have negated this tedious "but where are the WMD, ho ho ho" stuff we see so often.

"was the failure to adhere to the terms of sanctions and consequent removal from the diplomatic world"

I presume you meant to say "was the failure to adhere to the terms of UN resolutions and consequent removal from the diplomatic world" in which case Iraq is not unqiue. What about Israel?