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The US insists that Tehran retains nuclear ambitions, despite its own intelligence estimate that work on a weapon has stopped, but its occupation of Iraq has given Iran a hostage it could never have imagined having.ДЄs for al-Qa'ida, it never had a foothold in Iraq until the chaos created by the invasion gave it the opportunity to establish one. No one in Washington appeared to have calculated that to unseat Saddam, whom the US once supported as a bulwark against the Iranians, would empower the majority community in Iraq, the Shias, or that many of them would look to the world's only Shia nation, Iran. The main winners of the war are not the ones its instigators planned: Iran and al-Qa'ida. The standing of both Britain and the US has suffered immeasurably, and the international scepticism engendered by manipulation of the evidence on WMD has hampered efforts to deal with nuclear threats from the likes of North Korea. Tony Blair, his partner in the reckless venture, has already gone those in a position to know believe he would still be Prime Minister had it not been for the war. George Bush is the most unpopular President since opinion polls began, mainly because of Iraq. The Senate refused to confirm John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN.

His former deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who famously said that WMD had been used as the excuse for war because it was the only topic Washington's bureaucracy could agree on, was forced to resign as president of the World Bank after arranging a pay rise for his girlfriend. (By October 2006 he was admitting: 'We're losing in Iraq.') The most arrogant of them all, Donald Rumsfeld, the ex-secretary of defence, was reluctantly dropped by Mr Bush in his second term. Nor have the eager promotors of the war, such as Mr Adelman, fared well. The US troop 'surge' has cut the number of murders, but there are still 26 a day in the capital. Baghdad households suffered power cuts of up to eight hours a day in Saddam's time now they can expect less than eight hours of electricity a day on average. Two million Iraqis have fled the country, and at least as many again are internally displaced. Other studies have multiplied that figure by five or six. So, five years on, who can be said to have won the war? Certainly not Iraqi civilians, at least 90,000 of whom have died violently since 2003, at the most conservative estimate.

Rescind tony blairs knighthood hundreds thousands