Apparently we're all meant to say we were somehow wrong and shut up as the CoW dump-and-run rampage continues across the Middle East.

Afghanistan and Bin Laden are problems that have apparently been solved, as have Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

You can also forget North Korea (after all, we know it can fight back) and prepare to hear lots more about the new dangers of Syria, its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and some evil tyrant that CoW leaders probably hadn't even heard of until yesterday.

Of course, militarily speaking, CoW forces did secure quick victories in ousting the regimes of both the Taliban and Saddam. The evidence is mounting, however, that their victories are hollow.

Sure, we've all seen the pictures of an Afghan girl removing her burqa and ecstatic Iraqis jumping up and down in excitement at being liberated from Saddam.

What other proof could we possibly need that the world is now a safer and better place?

Well, plenty, because both countries are in chaos.

The fact that the victory version of the War On Terror or Operation Iraqi Freedom (or whatever it's called this week) has gained such prominence, suggests we are seeing a new epidemic of the SARS virus: severe avoidance of rationality syndrome.

Its main symptoms is that the sufferers become mentally disturbed and can only see, hear and believe what they want to.

And it's rampant.

We can see, for example, that every CoW official who gets near Afghan President Harmid Karzai is so SARS-ridden that they're unable to either see or hear him.

Karzai wants to give CoW folk some advice about post-Saddam Iraq, because he says that 18 months after the Taliban were overthrown in Afghanistan, the grip of unscrupulous regional war lords is getting tighter across the country.

Karzai reckons the CoWs should "be careful about backing the right people and be wary of creating new powerful factions".

But the poor SARS-affected mad CoWs apparently can't see or hear his warnings.

And so, in Iraq, we saw that SARS victims could hear a group of Iraqi Shias cheer as US soldiers tore down Saddam's statue, but couldn't hear them boo when the same soldiers first draped the Stars and Stripes over the statue.

Nor could they hear the many thousands of Iraqis in Nasiriyah this week loudly yelling "yes to Islam, No to America".

Poor old US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks has caught the virus, too.

This week he told a press conference in Qatar that he hadn't seen or heard anything about US troops opening fire in Mosul on Iraqis who were protesting against US occupation.

What dead and injured? Can't see a thing.

The next day he had to admit they just might be there. And as for US Defence Secretary Donald Rulmsfeld, all he can see is a bit of "untidiness" in Iraq.

And while he can't see any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq just yet, he's sure he can already see them in Syria.