ONE hundred is, as the Big Brother competitor and sometime MP George Galloway said, a melancholy milestone.

The list on Page 3 makes sad reading. One hundred young lives blown apart.

But it is much more than that. It is the young wives turned into widows; the young children who will grow up without a father; the fiances and girlfriends who have had their hopes and dreams destroyed.

Plus the 240 servicemen who have been irreparably injured and the 700 or so who have been badly wounded. And the 2,000-plus American soldiers, and the 10,000-plus Iraqis.

It is a very melancholy milestone.

Understandably, the anti-war movement is using the moment to drum up support. It is very easy to be anti-war - Laura Bush even says that her husband, the US President, is anti-war.

It is extremely easy to be anti-war given the half-truths, which some might call lies, that were fed to us, and also the apparent lack of post-invasion planning and exit strategy.

But being anti-war would not have solved the problems of the world after 9/11. It would have allowed the hateful Taliban in Afghanistan to continue to foster terrorists who would have continued to pick off civilian targets in our capital cities.

It would have left Saddam Hussein and his murderous cronies in power, continually sticking two fingers up as the United Nations continued to pass pointless resolutions condemning them.

The ten million who voted in last month's elections would not have had that freedom had the 100 British soldiers not given their lives.

So it is a fine judgment about whether the war in Iraq was right.

But to do what the anti-war voices were calling for yesterday - the withdrawal of British troops - must surely be wrong. We have messed up Afghanistan and Iraq; we must stay to put them right.

If we withdraw, Iraq will plunge into civil war. Withdrawal might save British soldiers, but we will condemn many more Iraqis to Saddam-style mass graves, and we will damage British interests which require a stable Middle East.

We are nave in the extreme if we think there are easy answers to these international problems. And Iran is another that is going to be occupying our thoughts - although hopefully not our troops - for some time to come