DURING the coming months attention will once again return to the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, with critics of the war determined to undermine the efforts of the coalition because of their failure to find large stocks of chemical and nuclear armaments.

Yet if the definition of a weapon of mass destruction is that which is capable of killing massive numbers of innocent people, then surely the location of the most effective weapon of mass destruction in the region, the one responsible for the deaths of nearly half a million people, has at last been discovered.

The arrest of Saddam Hussein cowering in a hole in the ground with his loot has to be the greatest Christmas present the coalition forces and the Iraqi people could ask for.

Peter Scargill,

Willow Cottage,

Wark on Tyne.

Updated: 12:23 Tuesday, December 16, 2003