THERE are winners and losers in any conflict. That remark applies with equal conviction to individuals staging a 'one on one', or the world's only super power and its remaining significant ally against an impoverished Arab nation controlled by a megalomanic dictator.

No-one is surprised that Iraq has finished a very bad second in the reprise of the 1991 Gulf War, though even military strategists appear to have underestimated the speed of the coalition victory. If there is one vital lesson to be learned it is that America's awesome firepower will henceforth determine that its hawks can do pretty well what they want. Who is next on the hit list?

The world was never going to be the same after "9/11" and America's view of the world, rarely the most diplomatically astute, will now be determined by how its leaders assess other regimes. "If you aint with us, then you must be agin us," seems to be the US government's foreign policy, or a simplified version of it.

We knew who the "winners" were going to be before a shot was fired or a bomb dropped. George Dubya and Tony Blair have done their best to appear restrained while basking in the after-glow of triumph. They would be well-advised to remain so. The war may be won but the peace could be a major problem. Trouble between religious groups, fuelled by decades of hostility, and mistrust of America, viewed as imperialists intent on reshaping the Middle East, means establishing a stable, democratic government will be far more difficult than removing Saddam Hussein.

That brings us to the losers: The Iraqi people. They have their "freedom" but it came at a terrible price. Distressing television pictures of 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas, who lost both arms and was horribly burned when his home in Baghdad was bombed, must have dismayed Messrs Blair and Bush.

The boy's parents and several family members were killed in the blast, compounding the coalition leaders' discomfort. They have won the war but lost the battle for hearts and minds as little Ali is not the only victim to have received high profile media attention.

A 17-year-old girl, shockingly burned; market places bombed; babies killed; old men and women sobbing in the ruins of their homes, make uncomfortable viewing when juxtaposed with pictured of American tanks rolling into 'liberated' Iraqi towns and cities.

And what of Lianne Seymour, widow of a British commando killed in the first hours of the war? Her dignity in the face of being asked to repay her husband's salary was an object lesson for the uncaring, mindless clown who sent the demand with a reminder that she and her three-year-old son would have to vacate their home on a Royal Navy camp as they were no longer eligible for such accommodation. No wonder Tony Blair squirmed when questions were asked in the House. Burying the dead with full military honours, then asking a widow for salary repayment, sounds like it came from the Saddam Hussein book of rules on war deaths. Maybe we can ask him if ever he is found.