In the Guardian, Sir Max Hastings is still trying to lose the war in Iraq for the coalition single-handed, this time by talking up 'dissension and dismay' within the US military. He tells us:

'Many service people are shocked by the incontrovertible evidence that the justifications offered by the Bush administration for invading Iraq - WMD and a link with international terrorism - were false.'

Uh-huh. Is that so. Well, what do they -- or perhaps that should be, he -- think was going in at salman Pak in northern Iraq, for example, where there was a full-sized airplane for terrorists to practise on? It's the word 'incontrovertible' that is so, er, arresting. I have book after book on my shelves with detailed evidence of Saddam's involvement in terrorism -- not to mention the Senate committee report which stated that he had been fomenting terrorism against the US throughout the 1990s. No doubt all this is incontrovertibly false, too.

By way of a contrast to Sir Max's relentless defeatism, the admirable Amir Taheri, writing in Arab News, comes up with a fascinating comparison between Iraq and Algeria. In the early 1990s, he says, the Algerian terrorist campaign had two objectives: to destroy the Algerian army, and to prevent the any elections. Almost by instinct, the Algerian leaders stumbled upon the holding of elections as a way of mobilising popular opposition to the terrorists, because while few are willing to kill or to die, most are willing to vote. Taheri writes:

'The turning point came in 1995 when Algeria organized its first ever pluralist and direct presidential election. This is was not an ideal election. The candidates were little known figures that had appeared on the national political scene just a couple of years earlier. None presented a coherent political program. To make matters worse the terrorists did all they could to prevent the election. They burned down voter registration bureaus and murdered election officers. Masked men visited people in their homes and shops to warn that going to the polls would mean death.

'And, yet, when polling day came it quickly became clear that the terrorists, in the forlorn attempt at stopping democracy, were, as in so many other instances in history, facing certain defeat. Never in my many years of journalism had I seen such enthusiasm for an electoral exercise anywhere in the world. The “silent majority” spoke by casting ballots, not because it particularly liked any of the candidates but because it wanted to send a message to the terrorists that they had no place in Algeria.

'That one election did not make Algeria a democracy. Since then Algeria has held three more presidential and a dozen local and parliamentary elections. None of these exercises have been perfect, and Algeria may need dozens more elections, which means many more years, before it can achieve the standards set by mature democracies. But the Algerian exercise has made one fact clear: The only way to defeat terrorism is by involving the mass of the people through elections.

'Algeria was the first major Arab country to be attacked by Islamist terrorists on a large scale. It is also the first to defeat them.'

The obstacles to freedom in Iraq are fearsome, and will doubtless get even worse before the election happens. But this inspiring and moving parallel demonstrates yet again why Sir Max Hastings is so very, and despicably, wrong.