Both in humanitarian and political and military terms, we have got ourselves into another mess, just as in Afghanistan, most parts of which are returning to the medieval control of warlords and, in some cases, the quasi-medieval control of the Taliban and where the country's single biggest export, the by-products of opium, are now flooding the western world again, yet the Government can produce a script which tells me that the position in Afghanistan is improving. One of the liberating powers of Iraq, Australia, which has grabbed most of East Timor's natural gas and oil resources and walked out of an international convention to make sure no international body can rule on that particular grab, is now giving lectures to the rest of the world about the joys of liberation in Iraq.