FIVE YEARS ago US, British and Australian forces invaded Iraq. As Iraq had not attacked them, and was incapable of attacking them, this was a war of aggression, although the softer "war of choice" term is often preferred, writes Tony Kinsella.
The media packaging of both the rush to war and the war itself is characterised by disinformation. The unanswered, almost unanswerable, question is how deliberate or delusional this disinformation is. Is the Bush administration seeking to deliberately mislead, or does it believe its own fairy tales?
President Bush claimed on March 19th that "since the surge began, the level of violence is significantly down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down, attacks on American forces are down". The level of violence is significantly down in Iraq for four clearly identifiable reasons, none of which Bush deigned to mention.
The International Committee of the Red Cross published its Iraq: No Let-Up in the Humanitarian Crisis report on St Patrick's Day. Almost five million Iraqis are described by the UN as "displaced". Those with sufficient money, just under two million, have fled the country, while the other three million have become internal refugees.
Since Shia and Sunni groups have succeeded in ethnically cleansing mixed districts, they no longer need to murder local residents pour encourager les autres to leave.
The US has bypassed the Iraqi government to hire 80,000 Sawha (awakening) Sunni fighters, paying them $10 a day. Bush calls them "concerned citizens". This $800,000-a-day parallel army has reduced, though not eradicated, suicide attacks.
Quite how this force will fit with the Shia/Kurd dominated Iraqi army and national police and US forces remains to be seen. Sgt Richard Meiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division sanguinely asked last January - "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"
The detention rates of the combined US, Iraqi government and Sunni forces have boomed, to the point where there are now some 26,000 detainees with no legal status outside the country's legal and prison systems. Finally, the US has rushed a $22.4 billion (€14.52 billion) programme to build over 15,000 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles.
There are now nearly 3,000 of these vehicles, developed from Israeli and South African designs, by four different manufacturers in Iraq. MRAPs have slashed US casualties from roadside bombs.
All of this provides Washington with a valuable, if expensive, breathing space. There is, unfortunately, no evidence of the White House using this opportunity to do anything more than breathe as the Bush administration continues to subscribe to the triumphalist school of thought.
This is a rather eclectic group which sees the war in Iraq as a success. "The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary, and it is just . . . and will end in victory" according to Bush, while vice-president Cheney argues that "it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour. . . and it has been well worth the effort" .
This school of thought also includes the beleaguered Iraqi government, whose existence depends on US forces; the Iranian leadership, thrilled that US arms have destabilised its Sunni Arab rivals while installing its allies in Baghdad; Osama Bin Laden, his Taliban allies and elements of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, delighted as they must be with the diversion of scarce resources from the conflict in Afghanistan and the provision of a clear jihad battlefield in the ruins of Iraq.
A second school of thought is peopled by those claiming credit for the brilliant idea of invading Iraq, while blaming others for its incompetent execution.
Neocons such as Richard Perle claim that all would have been well if Washington had imposed the neocon-selected Iraqi exile leadership: "Rather than turn Iraq over to Iraqis . . . a group including Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet . . . blundered into an ill-conceived occupation".
Others criticise the Iraqis for being unworthy. Danielle Pletka of the neocon American Enterprise Institute wrote: "I felt secure in the knowledge that all who yearn for freedom, once free, would use it well. I was wrong. There is no freedom gene. . . Iraqis accept unearned leadership . . . embrace sect and tribe over ideas, and tolerate unbridled corruption."
The sheer brass neck award has to go to the former US pro-consul Paul Bremer, who disbanded the Iraqi army and fired most of the country's civil servants ". . . prewar planning provided for fewer than half the number of troops that independent studies suggested would be needed in Iraq".
A third school of thought encompasses most of the rest of humanity who believe that this is, to quote Hans Blix, "a war of utter folly".
A folly compounded by an arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent US administration that continues to add bloody pages to some how-not-to-do-things textbook.
Senator Chuck Hagel (Republican, Nebraska) sums up these past five years of war as involving ". . . a reckless foreign policy . . . divorced from a strategic context . . . the triumph of neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence".
Just under 4,000 US troops have been killed. There are no hard figures for Iraqi deaths, with estimates ranging from 90,000 to over a million. The balance of probability suggests something of the order of 250,000. The US has spent almost $6 billion (€3.89 billion) to date, with independent research suggesting a final bill of over $2 trillion (€1.3 trillion). Iraqis will be the final arbiters of a solution. The process of stumbling towards such a solution can only begin with a US decision to withdraw. The American people, at the very least, owe their Iraqi victims the election of a president committed to ending this ignorant, ignominious folly."The Bush administration continues to subscribe to the triumphalist school of thought