It wasn’t meant to be like this when they began. But then the whole invasion of Iraq was based on a lie. According to the Observer, US officials knew there were no weapons of mass destruction three weeks after the fall of Baghdad, despite the assertions of senior US administration figures and Tony Blair.

They said the war was over too, and it isn’t. The year in Iraq was characterised by increased violence and resistance. Coalition spokespersons reported ‘sophisticated and simultaneous attacks’ on both occupying forces and local civilians.
The brutal fate of hostages Bigley and Hassan was foreshadowed in the shocking killings of westerners by a mob in Fallujah in late March. At least four were murdered, their charred bodies tied to cars and dragged through the streets, kicked, battered and dismembered. Chanting crowds celebrated.
The attacks, and the viciousness and hatred evident in them, belied the upbeat assessments the Bush administration had been circulating. As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, Seymour Hersh published photos in the New Yorker of prisoners being abused and humiliated by American troops in Abu Ghraib prison. They showed prisoners stripped naked, on dog leashes, piled high naked, sexually abused with knickers on their heads… the lot.
The war has brutalised Iraq and coarsened America. Debate and dissent are less tolerated than before in the home of the brave and the land of the free. While the influence of religious fundamentalism is not yet comparable to that which applies in Iran or Saudi Arabia, it is now a pivotal force in the US, much like Islam in Pakistan. We’ll be living with it for some time to come and, since so many born-again Americans believe in Armageddon, we must hope that what rises also falls.
At the end of the year, things in Iraq are much as they were at the start. Sure, there’s a puppet administration in place and elections are due to be held next year. But when the Americans attacked Fallujah they found, yet again, that the enemy had largely melted away. It’s not the ending they had in mind and yet again it stirred the old ghosts of Vietnam to life.