The other morning I was listening to Radio Baghdad - sorry, slip of the pen: I meant, of course, the BBC.

The producer gave five minutes to a speaker who spent his time saying that America's and Britain's coming war on Saddam would "...kill tens of thousands of Iraqi children." He went on to deny that Saddam is anything like Hitler: "Hitler invaded two countries before we finally decided it was time he was stopped."

Well, first the war to get rid of Saddam will not result in the deaths of thousands of children. The campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan removed tyrants without the collateral killing of thousands of innocents. And, when that "peace campaigner" on the radio reminded us that Hitler had invaded two countries before we declared war, he ought to know that Saddam has invaded three countries: Iran - where he killed a million people - Kuwait and the Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq. How much more evil has to be perpetrated by this satanic despot before civilised nations take their overwhelming power in their hands and destroy him?

But you don't want to listen to a case being made out by Peter Mullen. Like you, I'm thousands of miles away from the scene of the coming war. Listen instead then to eyewitness observers of Saddam's atrocities and to those who have suffered at his hands. An Iraqi woman, Nazaneed Rashid writes, "In the 1980s I was among many women who were picked up by his soldiers, thrown into prison, tortured and raped.

"Why don't those who march for 'peace' in the West understand that Saddam experimented on us in his laboratories where he was developing his chemical and biological weapons? Those who marched through London should go to the Kurdish villages where the water supply has been poisoned and where people are still dying from his terrorism; they should see the birth defects suffered by babies caused by his chemical weapons."

Hitler and Stalin always referred to "peace protestors" as "useful fools" who are by far the strongest element in the enemy's propaganda war. These assorted pacifists, sentimentalists and anti-American obsessives claim that the war will do no good, because when it is finished the condition of the Iraqi people will be even worse. Ask the question then: Why are so many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who - unlike the barmy "peace protestors" actually know what's going on in their own country - hugely in favour of intervention?

It's just rubbish to say things will not be better afterwards. On 5th May 1988, 5,000 northern Kurds were slaughtered in a gas attack by Saddam. In 1991, after the first Gulf War, the allies stopped Saddam's planes bombing the north. Now the Kurds enjoy a free and prosperous society, with a democratic government, a free press and 138 television channels. There are four women among their senior judiciary.

Let's get on with this war and have rid of the monster.

*Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange