They say the Devil has all the best tunes and were I a hawk on Iraq I might complain that the doves are enjoying a similar advantage. Our doveish tunes are on every lip. Our case slips easily from the tongue. The hawks’ argument is tricky to articulate and their motives easy to decry. Their frustrated attempts at explanation lead them into tangles that approach black comedy.

A high (or low) point in this farce arrived for me earlier this week while shaving. I was listening to the Foreign Secretary being interviewed on the Today programme. He suggested that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been found. A surprised interviewer protested that this was surely not the case. Aha! spluttered the Foreign Secretary, and was that not precisely the point? “The Iraqis have been found to be hiding them.”

Rumsfeld’s Fork: Saddam must show what he has or be indicted for hiding it.

The logic is cracked, of course, unless the undeclared major premise (that the weapons are there) is made explicit. But if the existence of the armoury is the starting point, rather than a possible conclusion, of the inspectors’ work why not just give Saddam 24 hours to lead them to it? Why have they been dashing around, trying to surprise the Iraqis, and asking for more time? Tony Blair’s latest line, that the inspectors are not in Iraq “to play a game of hide-and-seek”, would carry more conviction if the Prime Minister had told us at the outset that he did not expect the inspectors to find anything. Instead the impression is given that the UN team and its British and American sponsors did hope that it might discover weapons but, having failed to, has redefined its job as being available to be shown weapons by the Iraqis themselves.

Thus, and to our doves’ hearts’ content, we may make sport with the arguments of Bush and Blair. But when the mockery dies away do we not have to ask ourselves one awkward little remaining question? What if the undeclared major premise is true? What if the weaponry is there, just as Washington and London believed all along?

I happen to think it might be.

To that one awkward little question we doves should add another. What if the United Nations Security Council does in the end authorise an invasion?

The anti-war camp has invested heavily in what we might call “the UN route”. We have focused our criticism on London and Washington’s habit of hinting that if war is needed it must come with or without the support of the Security Council: the “second resolution”.

Now some of those doves who protest their allegiance to the rule of international law and the authority of the UN are genuine in their beliefs. If that second resolution is finally procured then they will switch from opposing the war to supporting it. That America and Britain might have attacked even without a resolution would not invalidate the attack.

Other doves, however, are being disingenuous. In their hearts they think that invasion is simply wrong, but as they doubt that the UN will authorise it anyway, they find it convenient to rest the argument on the supremacy of the Security Council. If, however, the UN is finally persuaded to legitimise an attack, these doves will not become hawks: they will change tack and complain that the Security Council has been “bullied” into war by Washington’s ultimatum. They will continue to oppose the war.

That is their right, but such a position would be wholly inconsistent with their earlier support for the rule of international law, for now it will be they who are flouting the UN. If the Security Council does agree a second resolution then, regardless of whether we like the pressure it was under to do so, we had better prepare for the possibility that the UN sanctions force.

Because I happen to think it might.

An invasion will follow. So here is another question the thoughtful dove should be asking himself. What if the invasion goes well?

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