In October, 2002, I wrote an analysis of the impending Iraq War for “American Conservative” entitled “The Road to Folly.”

I observed, “A war that fails to achieve clear political objectives is merely an exercise in violence and futility.”   Having covered 14 conflicts as a war correspondent and the Mideast, I’ve seen a lot of violence and futility. 

The White House launched a thunderous, utterly shameless propaganda campaign about phony threats to America and the world from President Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

On cue, US forces invaded Iraq in March, 2003. 

In America, the “bodyguard of lies” that Churchill said accompanies every war swelled into an army of liars. The Bush administration’s neocons played a leading role in engineering the Iraq conflict. Media acted as megaphones for the war party.

Thanks to the drumbeat of lies and insinuations, over 80% of Americans believed the canard that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

A few observers who dared critique George W. Bush’s rush to war, this writer included, were  denounced by the neocon media as “un-American,” “traitors,” or Saddam apologists – rather rich in my case since in 1991 the fun-loving Iraqi secret police had threatened to hang me as an Israeli spy! 

Invading Iraq would be a disaster for all concerned, I predicted, except for Israel, which would see a potential nuclear rival and the most technologically advanced Arab nation crushed by US power. Iran would also cheer the ruin of the hated Saddam, who had invaded Iran at the behest and with the support of the US and its Arab oil allies. 

“Bush is wrong if he thinks Iraq can be turned into another docile American protectorate like Kuwait or Bahrain.   He is committing an act of imperial overreach,” I wrote.  I also insisted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

In the event, Iraq, a nation of only 24 million, was shattered by US military power.  The war laid waste to large parts of this formerly advanced nation, already ravaged by a 12-year US-led economic embargo and daily bombing.  

Absurdly, Iraq was even denied lead pencils for its schools lest they be somehow turned into weapons of mass destruction.  During the 1990-91 first Gulf War, the US Air Force destroyed most of Iraq’s water purification plants and sewage systems.  Iraq was denied imports of chlorine to purify it fouled water.  The result, according to the UN, was true mass destruction: 500,000 children died from water-borne disease and lack of medicines. 

The overthrow of Saddam’s Sunni-led regime opened a religious-ethnic Pandora’s Box in Iraq, an artificial state created by Imperial Britain out of Sunni, Shia, Jews and Kurds to encompass its newly discovered Mesopotamian oil fields.

In a supremely idiotic act, US proconsul Paul Bremer fired all Baath Party military and civilian officials, gutting Iraq’s organs of government.   When US forces failed to put down fierce resistance by Sunni fighters, a much ballyhooed US troop “surge” supposedly crushed the uprising.   This is a Republican political myth.

As the Romans used to say, “divide et impera.”  Divide and rule.  In reality, Sunni resistance was broken by US-supervised ethnic cleansing: the unleashing of Shia death squads that inflicted untold barbarities on Sunnis, creating four million refugees, half of them driven abroad.  Millions in American bribes temporarily bought off other Sunni fighters.

The butcher’s bill for conquering Iraq and its vast oil fields: at least 4,483 US soldiers killed and over 33,000 seriously wounded, many with brain injuries.  But these figures are likely far too low.   Estimates of Iraqi dead run from 112,000 to over one million. The Pentagon knows, but won’t release the figures.

Remember the grubby Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neocon architect of the war? He glibly predicted invading Iraq would cost a mere $40 billion and be paid for by plundering its oil. 

Wrong. Wolfie’s jolly little war has so far cost $1 trillion.  In spite of the draw-down of US troops in Iraq, funding the remaining US garrison and the American-installed Baghdad regime remains enormously costly.  Much of the cost is hidden in CIA’s $54.1 billion “black” budget.

The Bush and now Obama administrations have concealed the war’s cost from Americans by refusing to pay for it through a war tax.  Instead, the total cost of  this war was put on the surging national debt, leaving future generations to pay for Bush’s folly.

Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Shia militias gained ascendency in Baghdad.  Rigged elections produced a compliant Shia regime. Allowing Washington to trumpet the arrival of democracy in Iraq – the same kind of “democracy”  it long nurtured in Mubarak’s Egypt.

Up north, US and Israeli-backed Kurds established a virtually independent oil state that infuriated Washington’s ally Turkey.  The Iraqi Humpty Dumpty is broken and won’t easily be put together again.

The expected Iraqi oil bonanza never materialized.  Today, Iraq pumps less oil than under Saddam. He threw out western big oil; today, the big US and foreign oil firms are creeping back, hoping to exploit Iraq’s riches.  Some 34,000 guards are being hired to protect Iraq’s pipelines.  Perhaps Libya’s “liberated” oil may lessen some of the disappointment over Iraqi oil.

President Obama has vowed all US combat troops will quit Iraq by December, 2011.   But a shell game is under way.  Two or more heavy US mechanized combat brigades are moving just a few hours drive south to new bases in Kuwait, ready to quickly intervene to prop up the tame Maliki regime in Baghdad.

Washington is trying to keep 10,000-20,000 US combat troops in Iraq, rebranded “trainers” and “anti-terrorism forces.”  Iraq has balked but may yet give in.   The new, huge, heavily fortified US Embassy in Baghdad will have 16,000 employees and its own private army of mercenaries.  What happens to the 100,000 other US-paid mercenaries in Iraq is uncertain.  One certainty: $34 billion US aid lost through fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan will never be recovered.

In the flat, arid Mideast, air power is decisive.
The most important indicator of Iraq’s future will be who controls its air space.   The US may continue to do so from Kuwait and other Gulf bases, just as Imperial Britain ruled Iraq by means of the RAF.  Iraq won’t be truly independent until it rules its own air space and once again has a real air force.

So what’s the bottom line on the “liberation of Iraq?”
A foe of Israel, removed. Hundreds of Iraqi nuclear scientists mysteriously murdered.  

$1 trillion spent.  Burning hatred for America across the Muslim world. Animosity in Europe, which warned against Bush’s modern crusade. Huge future expenses to sustain an obedient Iraqi regime while anti-US nationalist sentiment there is boiling. A big boost for Iran’s regional influence. The deaths and wounding of thousands of American servicemen.  

The original plan to dominate Iraq’s oil and set up US bases there to rule the Mideast has so far failed, and at titanic cost.   As we look back on this epic folly and again hear calls for war against Iran, we hear the famed words of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, “one more such victory and we are lost.”