The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has promised the parliament and people "certain" victory for the allied forces over Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime.
Amid reports that British forces in the Gulf had suffered their first known death in battle, Mr Blair warned that "more difficulties and anxious moments" lay before the British and American forces in the days ahead.
In his first Commons statement since the war began, Mr Blair reported coalition forces led by the American 5th Corps were on their way to Baghdad. As he spoke, he said, they were about 60 miles south of Baghdad near Karbala, just a little way from where they would encounter the Medina Division of the Republican Guard defending the route to Baghdad.
"This will be a crucial moment," Mr Blair said.
However, the prime minister insisted the allied strategy and its timing were proceeding according to plan. "Saddam will go, this regime will be replaced. The Iraqi people will be helped to a better future. The weapons of mass destruction, for which a peaceful Iraq has no use, will be eliminated. That we will encounter more difficulties and anxious moments in the days ahead is certain. But no less certain, indeed more so, is coalition victory," he declared.
Whereas a week ago the Commons had been bitterly divided over war without UN authority, anti-war MPs heard Mr Blair in silence yesterday as he led tributes to "the valour of British servicemen and women." The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Mr Charles Kennedy, who said he accepted the democratic will of parliament to back the government, also joined with Conservative leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, in echoing Mr Blair's tributes to those British and American personnel who had already given their lives.
In answer to questions from anti-war MPs such as Labour's Ms Alice Mahon, Mr Blair repeatedly stressed the coalition would do everything possible to minimise civilian casualties.
And the International Development Secretary Ms Clare Short - making her first appearance at the dispatch box since her decision not to resign from the Cabinet - sought to reassure Labour backbenchers she had made real progress in New York talks last week about the re-engagement of the United Nations in the post-Saddam reconstruction of Iraq.
Ms Short also repeated Mr Blair's hope that the production of the so-called "road map" to a Middle East peace settlement would be "a matter of days" after the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas assumed office.
While enjoying Conservative support for the war, Mr Blair again rejected Mr Duncan Smith's suggestion that the diplomatic fallout over the war made the case for a Europe of nation states and against a common European and Defence policy.
Mr Blair said this was a matter for disagreement to which they could return when the conflict was ended. Reporting on the EU summit last Friday, Mr Blair repeated his view that the post-conflict period should see open debate about the differences which had arisen within the EU and about the conflicting views about the future relationship between Europe and the United States.
Restating his war objectives - the removal of Saddam Hussein and the disarming of Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - Mr Blair said the allies had also embraced other considerations.
"We want to do this campaign in a way that minimises the suffering of ordinary Iraqi people, brutalised by Saddam; to safeguard the wealth of the country for the future prosperity of the people; and to make this a war not of conquest but of liberation," he said.
Asked about the response of Iraqi citizens to the allied action thus far, Mr Blair suggested it was to be expected they would be "circumspect" until they were convinced Britain and America meant what they said about removing Saddam from power.
Mr Blair confirmed the Sir Galahad was ready to deliver humanitarian aid and that, despite continuing pockets of resistance, the port of Umm Qasr was under allied control.
Mr Blair said it was in the nature of today's live reporting of war that people saw the blood and pain in shocking terms. But it was also worth recalling what was not always seen: "A nation degraded and brutalised by decades of barbarous rule, a country potentially rich whose people go hungry and a regime to whom repression, torture, the abuse of human rights and possession of WMD define their very nature."