Five years after the start of the Iraq war here are the reasons why I still support the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and why I support those politicians, McCain and Bush primarily, who are determined to prevail:
Saddam was a menace to the world and to this people. A terrible abuser of human rights, he had gassed his own people, harboured terrorists and invaded his neighbours, notably Kuwait. As long as he remained in power he was a threat to the stability of the region.
For the years after the liberation of Kuwait the UN sanctions regime had served to contain him but the oil-for-food regime had become corrupted and was close to complete breakdown. The status quo was no longer tenable.
By ousting him the world sent a strong message to all dictators in the region and across the globe that they might not be beyond the reach of justice.
The case for war should have been regime change rather than the immediate threat of WMD. Saddam Hussein was the real weapon of mass destruction because he had the will and technology to create and deploy actual weapons. But because America chose the UN route - an underacknowledged (and mistaken) victory for Tony Blair - the focus had to be on WMD because of 'international law'. The whole focus on finding the WMD that most international experts thought he had was a massive red herring. Perhaps Saddam Hussein had WMD and they were smuggled abroad. Perhaps he had them but destroyed them. All these theories are beside the point. The crucial threat was that a Saddam-controlled Iraq could easily have created them if the 2002/ 2003 stand-off with America had been won by Baghdad.
Our conflict with al-Qaeda didn't begin with Iraq. We must never forget the chronology. 9/11, the most notorious incident of al-Qaeda violence, happened some time before the toppling of Saddam. We did not begin the war on terror - as Rudy Giuliani has consistently called it: It is the terrorists' war on us.
Although Saddam Hussein harboured and funded terrorists the conflict with Saddam Hussein didn't begin as a conflict with al-Qaeda but we should know that it has become a conflict with al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups.
There is no negotiating with Osama bin Laden and other extremists. It is crazy to think they will retire if we withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. Take the latest video from bin Laden. His focus isn't on Iraq but the Danish cartoons that were seen to offend Islam. Our whole way of life offends the Islamic fascists.
General Petraeus' surge is working and polling of the Iraqi people by the BBC and ABC show that a majority of Iraqis - 55% - now say that their lives are going well. That compares to 39% in August 2007. There is still a long way to go and progress will not be linear but progress is measurable and significant since the surge began.
Defeat in Iraq is unthinkable. If America retreats from Iraq - beaten by terrorist tactics - those terrorist tactics are much more likely to be used against America and other western nations.
A free Iraq remains a great goal even though that goal has often been incompetently pursued.
