November, 2003

Okay, let's get it right this time. We're in for a long war but we won't be fighting it. Iraqis will be fighting it. We're training a quarter of a million of them, real quick, to kill each other. Sorry, kill the bad Iraqis, whom they'll recognise. We don't know who the bad Iraqis are. They may not be Iraqis at all. They may be Syrians or Jordanians coming in across borders that are unpoliced. They may be Saddamist diehards commanded by Saddam. We know Saddam is still in Iraq although the borders are unpoliced. So maybe it's him, commanding an army we abolished and wouldn't pay wages any more. Why they'd go back to his command beats us. Just because he paid them and we wouldn't.

Or it could be a new gang altogether. Or a series of new gangs. We can't tell because they keep killing us and getting away. No Iraqi will let us know who they are till we win their hearts and minds. And offer them big rewards. Tens of millions. And believe they're not telling lies.

The main thing is this, it's no longer a war to disarm Saddam. His weapons -- if they're his -- are getting bigger and more accurate. It's a war on terrorism now, because there's so many terrorists coming in through borders that are unpoliced. We're winning that war on terrorism, no matter how many terrorists come in and shoot at us. Every day we kill an Iraqi, innocent or not, that's at least one potential terrorist the less.

Although we don't know where the terrorists are coming from we've got great confidence in our intelligence services. They told us about the Niger uranium and the chemical weapons factories so we could go to war. They pinpointed Saddam so we killed him twice. They told us Osama was in Afghanistan so we blew up that whole country and didn't get him. Although we haven't caught Saddam or Osama yet and this was the aim of two whole wars we have got undying confidence in our intelligence services. They are the best.

We've got great confidence in our loyal allies too. Though they won't cough up much money, or hardly any troops, they're the only allies we've got. They send us good wishes, and hope we get the boys home by Christmas.
We can do this -- Christmas 2004 anyway -- if we can just persuade the Iraqis to tell us who's killing us, and what their usual addresses are, so we can kill them first. The only way to handle terrorists is to kill a lot of them.
Kill all of them really. Until we kill a whole bunch of them there'll be no end to the war on terrorism. Until that day comes we can't release David Hicks. If we let him out he can sue us.

No-one doubts that we will succeed in our endeavours or that Saddam, whose former army is killing lots of us, won't come back. No-one believes our troops will go AWOL while on R and R, or not many anyway. No-one believes the President's ratings will go down under 40 percent and he'll cut and run, and the Iraqis will ask the UN back to clean up the mess.

No-one believes that although the UN has left, and Red Cross has left, and no-one else is coming, that things are not improving. Of course they are. We wouldn't be here if they weren't. And if they don't, we'll probably leave. It's not a quagmire, really. More like a quicksand.