Matthew Parris writes to David Aaronovitch:

If I thought that the opinions of columnists and commentators in Britain and abroad were of no account, I would cease to write for newspapers. If I thought that arguments between media voices were so much futile babble, going nowhere, I would not contribute to them. If I thought that all necessary lessons had now been learnt from Britain’s colossal blunder in the Middle East, and the implications for future policy agreed, I would be happy to move on, as (echoing a favourite phrase of the instigator of Britain’s part in this war, Tony Blair) you seem to urge.

But I won’t move on. The neocons [Yawn] and their supporters have lost this argument, David, and they have done Britain and Britain’s standing in the world tremendous damage. I do not lay to their discredit the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, as I do not think they envisaged these, and nor am I sure Iraq’s history would in the end have allowed the region to be stabilised by anything other than exhaustion. But there have been British deaths, too, and all to no purpose – or no result.

I can think of at least two results, and that’s before breakfast.

1. The removal of the Baathist regime run by Saddam Hussain.
2. The undermining of Al Qaeda, whose approval ratings in the region have fallen.

Of course these have to be considered in the light of the appalling costs of the war, but to suggest that a fragile democracy, as a third example, is no result is demeaning to those in Iraq who are struggling to ensure it is a result that pays off in the long term. Oh, and here is a fourth result.