[...]If there are any weapons of mass destruction, the good news is that they will not be wielded by Saddam or any group of terrorists. And since it is time to put the good news into our utilitarian scales, here is a statistic that you should be aware of, all you Fisks and Pilgers and Robin Cooks, who prophesied thousands and thousands of deaths. I went to see Qusay Ali Al-Mafraji, the head of the International Red Crescent in Baghdad. Though some name-tags have been lost, and though some districts have yet to deliver their final tally, guess how many confirmed Iraqi dead he has listed, both civilian and military, for the Baghdad area? He told me that it was 150, and he has no reason to lie.

Of course it is an appalling sacrifice of life. But if you ask me whether it was a price worth paying to remove Saddam, and a regime that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands, then I would say yes. What do you see now when you walk past Iraqi electrical stores, which are opening with more confidence every day? You see satellite dishes, objects forbidden under Saddam. One man told me he had sold ten in the last four days, at between $200 and $300 a go.

Snooty liberals, and indeed many Tories, will say that this is vulgar and tawdry, and make silly, snooty jokes about the poor Iraqis now being subjected to Topless Darts and Rupert Murdoch. What such anti-war people don’t understand is that the Iraqis are not only being given their first chance to learn about other countries. They can now learn about their own. They can now watch channels not wholly consecrated to the doings of Saddam.

There have been terrible mistakes in this campaign, though those who followed the cataclysm at the Baghdad Museum may be interested to know that, when I went there, three big boxes of artefacts were being handed over, having been recovered from the looters. I suppose that, with 170,000 objects stolen, there was a slight glut in the market for cuneiform seals, no matter how old.

As George Bush gave his speech on Tuesday night, I happened to be watching it with three Iraqis. When he said that ‘the windows are open in Iraq now’, meaning that people could talk without fear for their lives, they laughed and banged the table. I can imagine the anti-war lot in Britain, with their low opinion of Bush, also laughing at his folksy rhetoric. But when I asked the Iraqis what they thought of the speech, I found I had completely misunderstood their laughter.

‘We agree with Bush 100 per cent,’ said one, and they all passionately agreed. Really? I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are free now.’ Iraq has huge problems, including colossal debts. It is barely governable. It would be unthinkable for America and Britain to pull out. But he says that his country is now free, and that, to me, is something that was worth fighting for. Saddam may be a ghost, but that is all.