The US invaded and attacked Iraq without any provocation. By the Nuremberg precedent which the US used against Nazi Germany and the subsequent UN Charter, such an invasion is a war crime. The original reasons given were Saddam was responsible for 9-11 (by Cheney) and that Saddam was amassing WMDs including nuclear weapons. Known false stories were uttered by Bush, like Saddam had bought uranium ore from Niger and bought aluminum tubes for centrifuges. Respectable American scientists and the IAEA had unequivocally opined that the tubes were for missiles and could not be used to enrich uranium. Ambassador Wilson and the CIA had confirmed that the documents alleging the uranium purchase from Niger were forgeries. The CIA had been unable to confirm Cheney's lie about 9-11 hijackers meeting Saddam's secret service in Prague. 

The plan to attack Saddam had been in the works even before 9-11 and was devised immediately after 9-11 to the surprise of fired Treasury Secretary O'Neill and counter-terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, as revealed in their books. The CIA had reliable information from Saddam's defecting son-in-law (who was in charge of Iraq's WMDs before he was murdered by Saddam) and later on from Saddam's minister whom the CIA had recruited by bribes, that there were no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq. The Downing street memos and George Tenet's despicable and pathetic attempt at enriching and exonerating himself in his book of lies confirm that the Iraq invasion was premeditated and decided upon without any factual basis, and intelligence was twisted and cherry-picked to permit it. Books by Hans Blix and Scott Ritter of the UN weapon inspector team tell how they were thwarted from doing their job, maligned and their mission aborted while US Secretary of State Colin Powell lied to the Security Council about Iraq's weapons.

When all these pretexts to invade Iraq were proved lies, Bush and Rice came up with the new excuse that Saddam had massacred Shiites and Kurds in the past and the US was promoting democracy in the Middle East. It was America that supplied the ingredients to Saddam to make chemical weapons and gave him the satellite data to achieve maximum damage to the Iranians whom Saddam had attacked first by chemical weapons. Thus the US was an accessory in Saddam's war crimes, genocide and human rights violations. As for democracy, it was the US that had overthrown the prior government in Iraq to install Saddam and was propping up undemocratic tyrannies in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and other Arab Gulf States not to mention Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan (much of the Muslim world).

The US invasion led to the death of a million Iraqis, exodus of four million Iraqis, internal displacement of few more million and lack of electricity, potable water and sewage disposal for the whole country. It led to over 50% unemployment, closure of schools, deprivation, malnourishment, starvation and destruction of the healthcare system. The US had no intention of holding democratic elections and appointed a puppet government in Iraq led by a CIA stooge (Alawi) just as it did in Afghanistan (CIA stooge Karzai). Subsequently it wanted to select the government by caucus just like it fools its own people by the Iowa caucuses, the electoral college, voter suppression and other democratic charades. It also wanted to write a convenient constitution and sell off Iraq's oil to British and American oil companies, but was prevented in the first by Ayatollah Sistani and in the second by the UN rules for occupying powers.

The UN Security Council in which India wants a permanent seat, connived by granting the illegal invasion of Iraq by America, legitimacy as an occupying power. The UN is the father, Iraq is the helpless daughter. Saddam was the abusive husband who was killed by the US bully so Iraq could be raped. The collaborating present Iraqi government is the new US chosen cuckold husband who will attest to the need for the bully to stay in the house under the pretext of protecting the daughter, even as the bully repeatedly rapes her so long as the cuckold husband gets ongoing payment per rape, and limited carnal access to the helpless woman. Such is Bush's argument in his speech why America can't leave Iraq. Before he invaded there were no insurgents or Al Qaeda in Iraq and no war between Sunni and Shiites.

Bush lied once again by calling Iraq an ally. He invaded Iraq. One doesn't attack allies. India needs to think again before becoming a US ally, if allies mean victims of attack. He then went on to demonize Iran. The Iranian government has a million faults and deserves much condemnation but it has more reason and right to interfere in chaos in its next door neighbor than America situated 8000 miles away. If the US can justify arming the Afghan Mujahedeen to fight Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, it can't find fault with Iran arming Shia insurgents in Iraq. If America can thumb its nose at the NPT, CTBT and ABM treaties, why can't other nations? Who gave the US the right to decide who should or should not have nuclear weapons or missiles? It is the US that opened the bottle, let out the genie and is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state and still reserves the right to nuke any and all nations by its preemptive nuclear doctrine.

The supine American media never question its politicians and both US parties are for identical aggressive and exploitative foreign policy, so the overwhelming opposition to war and occupation by the American and Iraqi public will bear no fruit.

Bush has clearly stated that US troops are in Iraq to stay. Billions of dollars spent on building the world's largest embassy in the green zone of Baghdad and multiple bases in Iraq were loud and clear warnings of the long occupation. Comparison with South Korea where US troops are still there after 50 years and no peace treaty has been signed with North Korea tells us that the war and occupation of Iraq are for keeps, just like those in Japan and Germany.

The psychopathology is the same as that of a gambler who will continue betting till he runs out of his last penny or that of a patient with cancer of the right arm who will consent to its amputation only when he is convinced that not cutting it off, will kill him. The last hope has to be extinguished and fear has to become dominant.

America will stay in Iraq till it runs out of money or troops or its economy suffers such a meltdown that the complacency and insouciance of its citizens are vaporized to pervasive deprivation by the heat of the Iraqi conflagration. Such are human nature and imperial hubris and thus unfolds the tragedy of the lives of imperial cannon fodder beguiled by the mirage of unthinking patriotic fervor or dire economic necessity.

Politicians inflame and manipulate the emotions of the naive and ignorant by setting up straw objects of hatred like religions, minorities, ethnicity, lifestyles etc., as Hitler's Germany, Sharon's Israel, Bush's America, Osama's Caliphate and extreme Hindutva's India show.