F.U.B.A.R.

WHEN something takes the lives of up to 37,000 civilians, something is usually done.

When 2,882 soldiers are killed, someone raises concerns.

When somebody spends around £500billion on something that didn't work, questions are normally asked.

And when those in authority were warned all those things were going to happen before they even began, governments fall, people get locked up and there's a big old public inquiry.

So I'm sitting here waiting for the announcement that the White House and Downing Street, and Dubya and Blair, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, Robertson, Hoon, Reid and all the other people who thought war in Afghanistan was a fabulous idea are going to be hauled in front of a panel of pissed off people, debt-ridden citizens, bereaved relatives and limbless soldiers to explain themselves.

I expect I'll be waiting a while.

But just for the record, the 11-year war which was launched purely and simply to find and punish the relatively-small number of people who planned the 9/11 terror attacks has so far killed thirteen times more people than died in the Twin Towers and in financial terms cost 38 times as much.

And that's without counting the 12 journalists killed for reporting it, or the veterans' medical bill, and the decades of welfare payments.

In return for our input Afghanistan has seen small but not-to-be-sniffed at improvements in terms of immunisation programmes, public education, roads, transportation, women's rights and some almost-democratic elections which means its parliament has one of the world's highest proportions of female representatives in the world, at 28 per cent.

It also has the fourth most corrupt government on the planet, three quarters of the civilian casualties were killed by their own countrymen, and things like this still happen:

So it's not exactly an unqualified success.

Now a leaked report for US military commanders, compiled from prisoner interrogations, reveals the entire thing was a waste of time. The Taliban will regain control when troops finally leave in 2014, the population prefers the certainty of fundamentalism - emphasis on the mentalism - to the vagaries of a corrupt elite installed by the invaders, and the new Afghan army and police force we've been busy training were in fact Taliban all along.

Oh, and the whole insurgency has been funded, backed and arranged from Pakistan from whence, students of history might like to note, the earlier Afghan civil war from which the Taliban emerged was also masterminded.

Worse, none of this was a surprise.

Experts in Afghan matters were lining up to point out the problems of an invasion, but because this didn't fit in with "HOO-AH! HUT HUT HUT" they weren't paid much attention to.

If only George 'What's a Dubya?' Bush had taken time to read the predictions of Professor Paul Wilkinson of the University of St Andrews, who wrote a book called Terrorism vs Democracy in 2000. It mentioned the possibility of suicide plane-jackers, and when interviewed by an enterprising journalist six days after 9/11 Prof Wilkinson went on to say that war was a bad way of dealing with these particular fanatics.

He said: "There is no simple military panacea for dealing with this phenomenon. It is a much more subtle, sophisticated mixture of political, diplomatic, criminal justice, intelligence and other activities such as sanctions. Intelligence in a free society is at the heart of a successful strategy to defeat terrorism.

"The general strategy has to be a multi-dimensional one. It cannot depend entirely on military force. That has never worked in the whole 30 year history of modern terrorism."

(Only that didn't happen.)

In case anyone had trouble understanding, he went on: ""Sending troops into a country like Afghanistan with its very hostile terrain is a dangerous task. These people know their mountains and their valleys, every rock and every cave... The death of innocent civilians... would decrease international support for America and increase support for bin Laden."

(That did happen.)

And finally Prof Wilkinson pointed out: "A powerful democracy like the United States, with its strong underlying principles for the rule of law and upholding human rights, should not desert the moral high ground."

(Well that didn't... oh.)

Perhaps the powers-that-be took no notice of Prof Wilkinson because the above interview appeared in the Birmingham Post. Maybe they ignored every other expert saying exactly the same things in their own departments and to other news organisations because they were all a bit deaf, blind, dim, or just as fundamentalist as those they thought they could defeat with bombs rather than brains.

But I suspect the main reason they didn't pay any attention was because they were too busy cock-waving to do any damn thinking.

War costs, words don't.

Poor foolish humans.

Things that have gone wrong with the world today:

1. Hugh Grant's idea of "supportive" fatherhood is a half-hour with the baby followed by a four-day golf tournament he wasn't even in after the first three rounds.

"Well, this is going to be a handicap."

2. Someone's decided to ask the Greeks if they feel like doing any work after lunch.

3. We have 72m mobile phone handsets in a nation of 60m people; if you knock out those who don't have one, like babies, the frail and the insane, around 22m of us are having affairs.

Still, on the other hand, this means:

1. Hugh Grant may launch the kind of shagging spree which will make the last days of Rome seem tame.

2. These drachma receipt books will come in handy again.

3. Two thirds of us are probably busy hacking the text messages, voicemail and emails of our other halves using the 'how to' explanations so kindly produced by snoresheet newspapers in the past year, and therefore two-thirds of juries in the upcoming phone-hacking trials will be guilty of the same offence they will be trying a handful of journalists for.

All of which makes great copy for tabloid hacks like me, and also goes to show that the only thing you can ever rely on humans for is to screw things up.

"Apparently Andy Coulson hacked my condoms, which is a bally outrage. My golf game's really suffered."

A delusional game.

I KNOW I'm a girl but I can't be the first person to point out football would be more enjoyable without the footballers.

Hookers, vanity hair transplants, dodging drug tests, roasting sessions in which women are treated like meat and all of it paid for by earning the kind of money-per-minute which would put an oil pipeline to shame.

And topped off, in pretty much every case, by the intellect of a village idiot.

Last night Carlos Tevez, whose transfer to Manchester City was worth a total £64million, refused to play 15 minutes of football on the basis he hadn't been brought on earlier and didn't like Manchester much anyway. By comparison, £64m is the same amount of money recently offered by the US government to the Horn of Africa to help alleviate a drought affecting millions of people.

For that kind of money I would do anything the Man City manager wanted, up to and including baa-ing like a sheep on national TV for the full 90 minutes. I'd even do extra time.

Not long ago I was in a top-end bar when a Premier league footballer who shall remain nameless came in with his mates. He was fairly ugly, wouldn't take off his baseball cap inside, and wore a watch nearly as big as his fat head. Within 30 seconds a dozen girls had swarmed to his side, grinding in his lap, giggling at his comments and two of them even put on a faux-lesbian show. They weren't hookers, but might as well have been, and it was only half-eight on a Wednesday.

It all leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, and that's why even though if anyone asks me who I support I proudly tell them I can never be bothered to watch the overpaid thick louts unless we get into an interesting final of some kind.

I've been in Africa and Asia when there's a big win and seen love and devotion for a sport which can unify the whole world pour through the streets as grown men hug and cry and sing. I was working on a local paper covering possible 'hooligan trouble' during the 1998 World Cup and was watching the England-Argentina game through a pub window with a police patrol when Michael Owen had his amazing run to goal. I swear the roof lifted right off the pub with the crowd's roar, while me, the local inspector, his sergeant and four constables jumped and screamed outside then did the can-can down the street.

Football can be a beautiful game. I just think it would be even better, and less amoral, avaricious and stupid in so many ways, if we sent 22 labradors onto the pitch to run after the ball.

Either that or we start paying the players in dog biscuits.

I don't think he'd notice.

Money can't buy clarse.

IF THERE'S one thing to admire about the aristocracy, it's their sheer lack of any kind of brainpower.

That's why Prince Philip's forever putting his foot in it, why we all had a soft spot for bumbling George in Blackadder, and why Dishface is Prime Minister despite having the wide, flat, rich man's arse which signifies centuries of breeding by people who did a lot of sitting down. It's probably why he uses it to think with too.

(I know, he runs a lot. But trust me, if you ever see him from behind, it looks like a tired Chesterfield sofa).

Every posho in Britain is just very, very silly. Brian Sewell. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. And there is no-one sillier than Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes.

Leaving aside the predictability of his above and below stairs plotlines - oh, a feisty female servant! A visiting cad of a lord! Might there be a ravishing on offer? - he has decided it is appalling that his wife cannot inherit the Earldom of Kitchener.

He barked to the Radio Times: "If you’re asking me if I find it ridiculous that in 2011, a perfectly sentient adult woman has no rights of inheritance whatsoever when it comes to a hereditary title, I think it’s outrageous, actually. Either you’ve got to get rid of the system or you’ve got to let women into it. I don’t think you can keep it as 'men only'."

He added: "The point is not whether or not you approve of hereditary titles, but given the fact they do exist, the exclusion of women from them under English law is absolutely bizarre."

And like all poshos, there's a tiny bit of the peasant inside me which tugs its forelock and agrees with him. Of course a woman should inherit a title as well as any man. All our greatest rulers have been queens, although I wouldn't like Elton John to go getting ideas. Kate and Wills' firstborn, if she doesn't have to carry it in a box and it is a girl, should be the heir apparent. The aristocracy are too much fun to get rid off but why not modernise them a bit?

Yet if you start down that road it only leads you to one, inevitable conclusion.

It's not only wrong only boys can inherit, it's daft only the first-born can. It's insane anyone gets to sit in the second House of Parliament voting on legislation simply because their great-great-great-great-great grandpa once played dice with a king. It's beyond mental the head of state is decided in a random genetic lottery among people who haven't done anything to add to the sum of human achievement for several hundred years, can't marry a Catholic and don't sit an exam first.

So working class logic leads me to point out to Julian Fellowes that if he wants to apply equality legislation to the aristocracy and start making it a merit-based system then a) he can afford to launch the court case and b) it would inevitably lead to Prince Philip's extinction. And none of us want that.

It might be interesting to see it argued about in court, though. If nothing else we might find out if all aristocratic wives are actually just shop dummies from the neck down.

Samantha Cameron, explained at last.