JITTERS

Suddenly, September 10 again. Friends calling from New York City, asking if I have a spare room. Nervous glances up at the TV screens in the gym. Greta van Susteren declaring a specific cyanide alert in New York City, where none existed. Duct tape jokes. Tanks at Heathrow. It is a war, isn’t it? It reminds me that the anti-war protestors are not in fact trying to prevent a war. They cannot – because one has already broken out. They merely want to give up on one critical front. The trouble is: our enemies won’t.

THE SMOKING MISSILE: The issue is not whether we have discovered an illegal piece of weaponry in Iraq. The question is whether Saddam will allow these missiles to be destroyed. Blix should demand it. Then see what the French say.

PARIS TO THE RESCUE: Could the French swing Middle Britain behind the war? Boris Johnson thinks so:

Just as everyone was laying into the Number 10 spin machine, the French did something so disgusting, so selfish, and so French, that the British media have had no choice. The press has dropped Alastair Campbell’s dodgy dossier, in favour of that time-honoured staple of the British journalist – the orgy of frog-bashing. Confronted by French treachery, previously fence-sitting newspapers such as the Daily Mail have suddenly seen the merit of the war, and the downmarket tabloids have gone gallistic. You know the kind of articles: they involve references to Vichy, tanks with reverse gears, garlic-guzzling peasants, women of loose morals cosying up to the Boche, and they traditionally end with the cry: “And they eat our children’s ponies!”

And just in time!