military action, come what may, within a few days of that debate.

In a parliamentary response to me on 15 January 2003, the Prime Minister said:

"we are prepared to take action if necessary in respect of Saddam's regime. It is right because weapons of mass destruction—the proliferation of chemical, biological, nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology along with it—are a real threat to the security of the world and this country."—[ Official Report, 15 January 2003; Vol. 397, c. 682.]

So he clung on to the WMD theory at that stage. On 25 February 2003, in response to the rhetorical question:

Six months before, he had agreed with President Bush that war was indeed inevitable. At the time that statement was made, 120,000 American troops were massed on the Iraqi border,State of the Union address. He was not the gung-ho President Bush of 2002, whose axis of evil speech promised war all over the world. He was a President desperately trying to find some way forward. He was offered a way out by the Iraq Study Group, which he seemed to reject, and has now gone for the bizarre option of putting in more troops to try to control the situation.

President Bush will be for ever remembered as the President who got bogged down in the war in Iraq, just as President Johnson is remembered as the President who was bogged down in the war in Vietnam. He knows what the opinion polls in the United Sates are telling him; the Prime Minister knows what opinion polls in