For once Tony Blair has got it right. "Anti-Americanism is madness." Those who hate America for what it is - a large powerful, country with its own distinct culture, traditions and mores - are both xenophobic and ridiculous. That is particularly true for those in Europe without the humility to recall their recent genocidal past and ignore their racist present as they labour uphill in search of the moral high ground. The US did not launch the Holocaust, almost entirely wipe out the aborigines or oppress the Algerians, Kenyans and Mozambicans. Nor is fascism a mainstream ideology in the US as it is in much of Europe.

As African Americans remained stranded in plain sight following the flooding of New Orleans last year, Mayor Milton Tutwiler of Winstonville, Mississippi told the New York Times: "No one would have checked on a lot of the black people in these parishes while the sun shined. So am I surprised that no one has come to help us now? No."

London

But despite his own misgivings, Crowe clearly believed military intervention was likely in the interests of presidential prestige.

I had plaits at the time; they poked out of the ill-fitting cap and could never be dried in time for the clean sweep of the mop-wielding maniac. And so it was that every Thursday morning at 9:35am a young black man would walk out on to Leningrad's main street with freezing braids and make his way over to his first translation class of the morning looking not unlike a hedgehog.

So is there anyone left who seriously still thinks invading Iraq was a good idea? A CNN/USA Today poll yesterday showed 57% of Americans believe going to Iraq was a mistake. Given that psephologists say Americans' attitude to wars is guided primarily by whether they think the US will win, these figures tell us more about how they think events in Iraq will pan out in the future than the morality of what has happened so far.