I am all for saluting the efficiency and bravery of the armed forces in doing their job, but did anybody really ever doubt that we’d win the military conflict? Do we cheer when Australia thrash Bangladesh at cricket, or throw street parties when Brazil drub Lithuania at football? A senior commander of the SAS in the last Gulf war told me last summer that the allies had virtually wiped out Saddam’s infamous Republican Guard in 1991 and any fight with them now would be laughably one-sided. This was confirmed by one of our own Marines who described a tank battle with a renegade Iraqi mob outside Basra as ‘like pitting Ferraris against Austin Allegros’.

But the gloating, as it were, has nothing to do with your expectations of victory, Piers, and everything to do with those who were shouting "Quagmire!" every time our forces met any resistance, sandstorms included. It is the inconsistency of the entire anti-war pantheon which makes us gloat today. First, we were told that a year and a half process of jumping through the UN's hoops was a "rush to war." Second, we were witness to the berating of the Bush administration for not finishing the war in one weekend. Then we were told, even as coalition troops were securing the Baghdad airport, that we were in a quagmire; the Eleanor Clifts and Andrew Greeleys of the anti-war media raised ghosts of Vietnam. Yet, only days later Iraqis were laying down beatings to various Saddam Hussein statues in Baghdad. It is the utter insincerity of the anti-war cacophony which causes us to gloat today. We know the left will move on to the next perceived bit of doom and gloom no matter what happens as they always have in the past (the war will cost too much, what about the economy, everyone hates us now, blah blah blah). That's what makes you all so amusing to us.