PETER HITCHENS: How the wise men lifted my gloom at Christmas in bandit-ridden Baghdad

Of all the strange, disrupted and delayed Christmases I have experienced while pursuing my strange journalism profession, the strangest was twenty years ago, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by the Americans in a hole in the ground.

I rushed to Baghdad for the second time that year, a somber and unfestive journey that left Europe and its cheerful lights behind for the darkness of the war-torn, electricity-free Iraqi capital.

I especially remember having to change planes in Vienna, where the airport was full of Christmas and merriment, and I fell into the most hopeless gloom. I thought one visit to post-war Iraq would be enough. The place was clearly headed for disaster. A clueless invasion had been followed by an even more unfortunate occupation.

There had been many low points, the lowest being a mass grave of Saddam's victims, which those who uncovered hoped would dispel the doubts of people like me who believed the war was wrong. This did not happen. The sight was disgusting and deeply sad, but simply did not justify this enormous aggression (now quickly forgotten), in which so many more mass graves would be dug and filled.

Months later, the capture of the fallen tyrant had not made much difference. It was the Americans who were now feared, not because of deliberate cruelty, but because of the trouble they had caused while meaning well.

In a shabby square in the city center, with my brave, patient Iraqi fixer and translator Samir, I greeted the appearance of a US Army patrol with interest, but Samir quickly pulled me behind a pile of rubble and hissed: 'They are opening fire on everyone, for no reason. Stoop!'

Samir, a Christian Arab with no love for Saddam, was one of many who told me how much worse life had become for Iraqi Christians since the invasion – an unintended but enormous result of the war.

Saddam had reined in all kinds of fanatics who have since made the lives of non-Muslims and women increasingly miserable.

After sunset, a primordial darkness fell over a city without electricity or any telephone. I missed a crucial meeting because there was literally no way to alert me that the location had changed. And while the impenetrable night initially seemed picturesque, it was made hideously modern by the rattle of AK-47s fired for a sinister purpose: kidnapping; intimidation, who would have thought?

This Baghdad was still just off the map, neither reached nor left by air. To get there and back, I had to ride slumped in the back of a heavy GMC truck, part of a risky convoy shuttling between Baghdad and the Jordanian capital Amman.

It was a convoy because of the very real fear of armed bandits who sometimes robbed travelers on this lawless highway.

The road had been heavily bombed by the US Air Force, and we swerved around the huge craters this had caused, while I tried to pass the time reading Dorothy L. Sayers' great detective novel The Nine Tailors, set in a far flooded area. , deep green Lincolnshire.

The desert here was vast, humid and reddish, just as I had imagined Mars. Rivers could be seen from afar, because of the rare trees that grew around them.

I was in a foul mood and about as dejected as I could be when we set out in the early hours of the morning for this tiring, worrying return journey. Then it all changed, at least in my mind.

It dawned on me that we were following at least part of the path the wise men would have taken from their small town in Persia to Bethlehem.

As the great master of the English language, Lancelot Andrewes, described it in a Christmas sermon to King James I in 1622: 'It was cold at this time of the year; simply the worst time of year to travel, especially a long one. The roads deep, the sharp weather, the sun furthest away, the heart of winter.'

The words were so moving that they were stolen 300 years later by the Anglo-American poet TS Eliot. They also describe the grimness of the land east of Jerusalem, which was also plagued by robbers at that time.

And suddenly my dreary Christmas in Baghdad didn't seem so bad, and my poor presents for my abandoned family – an Arab headdress, Iraqi money with and without Saddam on it, a few silver trinkets and a pack of those stupid American playing cards with former Iraqi Big Noises on the run and wanted by the American army – they seemed like decent gifts. Merry Christmas.

Sympathy can be turned into bad law

I sympathize with Esther Rantzen in her illness, and with her family as they deal with it together with her. But can I express a dissenting opinion about the people who are now insisting that assisted suicide should be made easier?

The law on this difficult subject is already very careful and flexible, and while it may be difficult for devoted family members to endure police investigations after doing what they think is right, kind and just, they really do think it is wise to simply to remove the law? brakes?

In a 2021 parliamentary response on the subject, then Solicitor General Lucy Frazer told Andy Slaughter MP that in the period between April 2009 and January 2021, 167 such cases had been referred to the CPS.

Of these, 110 were not prosecuted, 32 were withdrawn by police, eight were 'ongoing' at the time, three were convicted, one was acquitted after trial and eight cases were referred for prosecution on more serious charges. This suggests to me that police and prosecutors are taking the issue seriously, but are also reluctant to prosecute those whose goals are truly benevolent. That's as it should be. Before 1967, abortions in this country, as few now know, were legal, under strict conditions and even took place in NHS hospitals. A highly emotional campaign, obviously focused on the most moving cases, created the laws we have today, which (as their opponents said) led to abortion on demand.

Difficult cases have led to bad legislation. Do we really want our kindness and sympathy to be turned into euthanasia on demand?