MUCH quoted in the Iraq war, the Geneva Convention is framed not only to secure humane treatment of prisoners but also to allow civilian life to continue as decently as possible. It therefore forbids targeting civilian sites.

But though these include TV stations and newspaper offices, vital means of communication, TV footage of the war showed a "coalition" tank felling a TV transmitter mast with a well-aimed shell. The reason, we were told, was to prevent Saddam "pumping out propaganda to southern Iraq".

Since the Iraqis are said to be desperate to get rid of Saddam, his propaganda, the words of a hated despot, should be of little consequence.

But obviously this war is not going to plan. And the unpalatable truth is that it would not have gone to plan even it had gone, well, according to plan.

What I mean is that even if the war had been as swift and simple as we were led to believe, the victors, including our troops, would not have been greeted as the liberators painted by our own propaganda.

The Arab world has little love for the US or Britain. Iraqis would never have accepted that the invasion of their country had any high-minded motive like removing a threat to the world from weapons of mass destruction, or bringing freedom to an oppressed people. "OK, you got rid of Saddam. But for the Americans it was about oil and power, and for Britain it was about keeping in with the Americans.'' That would have been the Iraqi line - and will be when victory is secured.

The double standards of this war amaze me. Our troops are "determined". Iraqis who resist are "stubborn". There is bewilderment that Baghdad did not yield instantly to the "shock and awe'' (ie terror) bombing that opened the campaign. We seem to forget how Britain came through the Blitz with slogans like Britain Can Take It, and Business as Usual.

Heavy bombing and shelling rarely achieve the capitulation, or even demoralisation, hoped for. Before the Somme, the German lines were pounded for a fortnight, which is why "our boys'' strolled out, confident that victory would be walkover. Instead they were mown down like corn.

To quote Macbeth, we are now "in blood stepped so far that... returning were as tedious as go o'er". Perplexingly, opinion is still swinging in favour of the war. Will the first suicide bomber in London change things?

Did you see the Iraqi father by the bedside of his seriously wounded child, who declared: "Someone must pay for this. I am willing to blow myself up.'' No doubt this was one of the "images'' that our propaganda masters would prefer us not to see.

An astounding statistic is that 40 per cent of Americans now believe that Saddam was responsible for September 11. Over there, people who speak out against the war are being stigmatised and victimised. Even here there are not a few who believe that to challenge the war is - in the words of a letter from a Darlington man to a Sunday newspaper - "tantamount to treachery".

So much for the values of freedom that supposedly underpin this ill-judged war, which looks more like breeding catastrophe than averting it.