HOW can you tell that a war against Saddam Hussein is very likely the best policy? Answer: because the bishops are against it.

Let's face it, they have got everything else wrong these last 40 years: through the Church Commissioners they have lost all the church's assets, so that there is now not even enough money to pay the clergy; their constant revising of the Prayer Book has emptied the pews; their system of church government is undemocratic; and the quality of training received by intending priests is abysmal. If they can't keep their own house in order, why should we trust them for a second when they intrude into secular politics?

Leave the decision for war in Iraq to the United Nations, then? But to put the UN in control of such a decision is as if we were to put Al Capone and Legs Diamond in charge of cleaning up Chicago.

Just Mullen airing his usual disgraceful and probably fascist opinions? Well, no, actually. For guess what happened last week? Something far worse than making Al Capone mayor of Chicago. The UN appointed Libya as International Chairman of its Human Rights Commission. This is no joke. This is the same Libya where there is no meaningful democracy, but a tyranny under the insane and evil leadership of Colonel Gadaffi. How can anyone take seriously the appointment of such a wicked shambles to chair the Commission on Human Rights?

But let's get back to the reasons why Saddam has got to be overthrown by force. Because for 12 years he has defied international law and the demands on him to get rid of his weapons of mass destruction. Because he threw out the legally-appointed weapons inspectors in 1998. Because he is impeding them in their current inspections. Because he is an evil dictator and mass murderer with a proven record of genocide. Because for 25 years he has sponsored terrorism and he remains the most likely supplier of bombs and chemical warfare agents to al Qaida and other terrorist groups. Are those good enough reasons why he should be deposed as a matter of extreme urgency? If not, then I don't know what could possibly count as reasons.

What about the "peaceniks" - the wishful thinkers, sentimentalists and other inhabiters of cloud cuckoo land who are even now on their way to Iraq to act as human shields? We have been here before. Remember CND. Remember the appeasers of Hitler. Remember how they were welcomed as excellent propaganda material by the enemy. Stalin called the nuclear disarmers in the Europe and the US "useful fools" and that is indeed what they were. Why won't the bishops and the other pacifists understand Edmund Burke who said at the time of the French Revolution: "The only thing necessary for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing."

The weapons inspectors are not going to find any weapons of mass destruction. Even if they do find them and destroy them, it would only be a gesture. So they declare Iraq clean. Then what? They leave. Saddam gets off the hook and builds his weaponry again. No, it won't do. It's time for an end to this deadly game.

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