Was it a quagmire? No. Did the Arab street rise? No. Did it plunge the Middle East into a crisis? No. Did the Iraqi people fight the occupiers to the death? No. Did they prefer Saddam Hussein to the Americans? No.

Every single thing that the anti-war protesters predicted would happen if we invaded Iraq did not happen. They were utterly wrong. Yet they still cling to one small sliver of hope. We have not yet found Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

So, as the mass graves are uncovered and the torture chambers are revealed, in Britain there remain people who wish we hadn’t sent our troops. For them the freedom of millions and the fall of a genocidal maniac are fortuitous byproducts of an unjust war. The failure to find weapons makes the whole thing wrong.

I find it extraordinary that anyone should ever have wanted Saddam to remain in power, but to hold this view now is beyond belief. Of course, the protesters reply that they hated Saddam too, and were keen to get rid of him, but not through occupation.

This argument is totally disingenuous. How did they plan to depose Saddam? By taking a Thermos of vegetable soup and a placard to a rally with Charles Kennedy? Only military action could get rid of him. Those who opposed war then were propping up Saddam, even if they disliked him. And those who now say that only finding the weapons justifies the war are saying it would have been better for Saddam still to be ruling Iraq than for us to have taken the action we did. Yet even if the entire justification for war remains the weapons, the argument is nevertheless overwhelmingly on the side of George Bush and Tony Blair.

To start off with, there is a world of difference between not finding the weapons and the weapons not existing. We know that Saddam had weapons and a weapons programme. (The author would like to thank a Mr Robin Cook from Livingston for pointing this out in a number of sadly forgotten speeches in 1998. Forgotten by him anyway.) We also know that when given ample opportunity to hand them over, or prove that Iraq had destroyed them, Saddam did not do so. He said he had not documented the destruction. Given that he documented everything, including filming personal involvement in murder, how likely is this?

So if we can’t find them it means he hid them well, spirited them to another country or destroyed them at the last minute because they were too incriminating.

Let us however, for a moment, accept the protesters’ case that there are no weapons to be found. Does this mean Saddam was not a threat? Of course not. Saddam had WMD know-how and his behaviour every time that world vigilance relaxed showed that he remained incredibly dangerous.

Unfortunately, by last year world vigilance was indeed relaxing. Sanctions were breaking down because there was no will to maintain them. The alternative to the decisive action that was taken was a permissive atmosphere in which Saddam could rebuild his military capability.

I believe every word that Mr Blair said about Saddam’s weapons. I wouldn’t like it if he were proved a liar, but in the end I would shrug. So he exaggerated his points and his opponents exaggerated theirs. But his so-called lies saved lives and their so-called truths left people to die.

Mr Blair may have to suffer the taunts of protesters. But at least he can sleep at night knowing that in the face of injustice he did his bit for freedom, that he reunited families and liberated victims of torture. His opponents can sleep knowing that all this was done, but not in their names.

The author is Associate Editor of The Times.

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