THE announcement that British troops will come home from Iraq by the end of July next year is refreshingly good news in the week before Christmas.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the conflict, there is no doubt that our troops have done an outstanding job, and we can all be proud of what they have achieved in the most challenging of circumstances.

They have shown admirable courage and sacrificed a great deal.

Too many have lost their lives and there will inevitably be more casualties before next summer.

And once the departure is complete, there will no longer be an excuse to avoid an independent public inquiry into the decision to go to war and the lack of a coherent post-war strategy.

The over-simplistic central justification given to the British people for the invasion – the existence of weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed against us within 45 minutes – proved to be embarrassingly invalid.

The successful removal from power of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of a democratic Iraqi government, is to be celebrated.

But that celebration must be weighed against the death and injury of hundreds of British troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

While Afghanistan and Pakistan remain causes of serious concern as breeding grounds for terrorism, we look forward to the end of our troops’ service in Iraq.

And we hope that their job really is completed, with the country being reborn as a stable democracy.