WITH Saddam Hussein in prison, Bush declares the war is over and won, and now that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has been set up, Blair asks us to draw a red line under the war. He should add "if only we could".

How can we dismiss the killing and maiming of thousands of innocent Iraqis and the destruction of the infrastructure of their country which means no clean water, electricity, and hospitals without medication to treat those suffering from the bombings from the occupation forces and insurgents?

Why, if the war is over, are there still 146,000 American and British soldiers still occupying Iraq, and an American Embassy holding 3,000 personnel? The war is not over, occupation forces are still being killed.

The Coalition Provisional Government does not have the authority to stop American planes bombing anywhere in Iraq, nor would they want to when Allawi, the new Prime Minister, is a CIA man, an M16 man, and a Ba'athist.

America is in control. They ran the court in which Saddam Hussein appeared, censored the tapes of the hearing, and now hold him in Qatar, not Iraq. With the exposing of American torture at the Abu Ghraib prison, and soldiers of two British regiments being charged with torture in Iraq, Blair has led our country into an illegal and immoral war, a crime for which he and the British people will continue to pay dearly.

Butler reported that the intelligence was flawed, the dossier was dodgy, the 45-minute claim was wrong, Iraq's link with Al-Qaeda is not proven, and the case for war was exaggerated. So, who is to blame? No-one. It was a collective decision.

Two questions we should ask: Who is the "collective", and when did Blair decide to go to war?

ELIZABETH TEBBS