The religious rallied by torchlight outside the British Houses of Parliament recently. Inside the House of Lords they were voting whether to strike out regulations in the new Equality Act that outlaw discrimination and harassment of gays, making it illegal to discriminate in providing any goods and services to anyone, from healthcare to hotel rooms.

The grand assemblage of Muslim MPs, members of the House of Lords (peers) and leaders of 38 key United Kingdom groups who signed an open letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair last weekend are almost certainly right. British foreign policy has helped foment murderous extremism among British Muslims.

The story of the night is the defection from Labour by those marching over to the Lib Dems — and some even to the Tories. Labour MPs never believed those opinion polls giving them an eight or 10 point lead. What they found on the doorsteps was profound anger focused on the person of British Prime Minister Tony Blair himself.

The eulogies have begun already. Extraordinary things are being written about the Pope for his 25th jubilee this week, yet these are mere aperitifs for the great banquet of adulation undoubtedly to come when the pontiff finally shuffles off his mortal mitre.

So was the war on Afghanistan worth it after all? The daisy-cutters and the cluster bombs, the misguided missiles butchering wedding parties while al-Qaida slipped away? , a year after Kabul fell as the Taliban ran, was it worth the killing of anything from 800 to 3 000 men, women and children?