Stardate 20030405.1502

(On Screen via long range sensors): I've had several people write to me in the last week or two and ask whether it will end up being a political embarrassment to the US if, once the war is over and we fully occupy Iraq, we discover that in fact Iraq does not actually have any WMDs.

First, it truly is a hypothetical question, because it's virtually certain that they do. As someone pointed out, to believe that they do not you'd have to believe that after they kicked the inspectors out, they then spontaneously destroyed the remaining chemical and biological weapons known to still exist at that time, but to not keep any records of having done so and to not include any such records or proof in the report they provided to the UN last December, and to actively resist all attempts to confirm that they were gone during the inspections in December and January.

Second, part of the point was not simply whether they currently had such weapons, but whether they had the capabilities and intentions of trying to develop them in the future. Of that there can be no doubt whatever.

Third and most important, even if it were the case that they did not actually have any, it won't matter anyway. What will be revealed about the horror of life in Iraq will more than justify the war. There have been fragmentary stories already, which hint at revelations to come. It seems that every town in Iraq had its own chamber of horrors, which people disappeared into and only screams emerged from. It will eventually become clear that the Baathist regime in Iraq will rank with the Khmer Rouge as among the most brutal and barbaric governments of modern times.

In the Basra area, British soldiers have found a warehouse full of human remains. And they have also found a scrapbook full of photographs:

It was the catalogues of photographs which visibly shocked the soldiers who had made the grim discovery.

"Bloody hell," one whispered, "These are all executions.

"You can see the bullets, shots to the head."

It was a moment which confirmed that this warehouse, in an abandoned Iraqi military base on the outskirts of Az Zubayr, southern Iraq, was almost certainly the site of a mass atrocity.

And worse was to follow - in the neighbouring warehouse hastily constructed breeze block cells were hung with racks, bristling with meat hooks.

Outside stood what one soldier described as "a purpose-built shooting gallery".

This is bad, but there will be much worse to come. The revelations will show the depravity of the regime, and sadistic treatment that it has been routinely inflicting on the Iraqi people.

And as more of this is revealed, then if it actually turns out that there was no nerve gas, and was no anthrax, and was no actual program to develop either, and was no program to try to develop nuclear weapons; even if that turns out to be the case, it won't be possible for anyone to stand up and say, "See! There was actually no justification for attacking Iraq. Its national sovereignty was violated for nothing and its government should have been left in power."

The reality of life in Iraq, graphically revealed, beyond any rational denial, will eliminate any idea that the war should not have been fought. It will make clear that "regime change" was, in retrospect, the only acceptable course of action and that "inspections and disarmament" would have permitted the horror to continue. And it will puncture, once and for all, any claim to the moral high ground by those who opposed the war.