HERE we sit, waiting for the fireworks. What fun it must be for the generals, who get to light the fuse on their latest death rockets and retire to the safety of their bunker.

Let's have the sweepstake now: what will be mistakenly vaporised first by multi-billion pound "smart" bombs which are about as accurate as Emile Heskey in wellington boots?

Will it be: 1) a school; 2) a hospital; 3) Basra townswomen's guild; or 4) the Chinese embassy?

What fun, too, for the TV guys.

I can't wait for that early-hours footage of an Iraqi night sky occasionally lit up by a weapon of mass destruction (it's okay: it's one of ours).

Any confusion is soon dispelled by the informed commentary from an expert reporter: "Whoa... there goes another one! That was a biggee."

At first light we will go live to the largest egos in journalism, complete with their sleeveless flak jackets, talking to the studio with breathless excitement. You don't get much more of a macho thrill than standing next to the most powerful loaded weapons in world history. Who cares if all they can tell us is what the tightly-controlled military media machine wants us to know?

Meanwhile, we all pray for the moment when BBC World Domination correspondent John Simpson liberates Baghdad.

Isn't war just the tonic we need to take our minds off this Government's domestic cock-ups? How nice it is for Tony Blair, a man pathologically obsessed by targets, to finally aim at some real ones for a change. "Knickers to waiting lists and school league tables: I've got a genuine tyrant in my sights!"

Prime ministers and presidents must get a real kick out of war. One minute you are bogged down with how to stop kids spray-painting community centres, the next you're an international statesman with some kick-ass firepower.

George W Bush, in that clichd Texan way of his, sees this as the cowboys against the Indians. A fight where we are either with him or against him.

Good ol' good against bad ol' evil.

In his comic book prose, delivered deadpan in the early hours yesterday, Saddam became a "deadly foe". (Oh, and don't forget the message from my sponsors: hey, you Arab critters, leave them oil fields alone!)

Tony and George would never admit the fun side to being the Commanders in Chief, although both know it will make a compelling chapter for the memoirs.

Instead they will say how agonising it is to send troops to war. But it is not as agonising as having your face burned off, or your back shattered by shell shrapnel; it is not the same pain as that suffered by a mother, British, American or Iraqi, whose child is killed in conflict.

Millions of people have politely mentioned to the Prime Minister that we do not want this war. He has ignored us.

While Mr Bush's philosophy is homespun, Mr Blair's is abroad-spun: when the US president told him to jump the gun, he asked "how high?"

So all we can do is order a pizza, sit back and watch the broadcaster's version of the destruction, drained of blood and wrapped in clingfilm like supermarket chops.

We might as well get comfortable. This war will prove that America can walk into any country it dislikes and change the regime.

Who knows which nation will be next? Wait a minute. Perhaps Mr Blair was right to suck up to that crazy, trigger-happy son-of-a-gun in the White House after all...

Updated: 10:24 Wednesday, March 19, 2003