From Morning Star

EVER since US President George W Bush prematurely announced the end of the Iraq war, several things have happened, not one of them good.

First, soldiers on both sides of the war have continued to die and hostilities continue and increase with every passing day.

Just as in Vietnam, despite their overwhelming military superiority, the US and its allies have no way of subduing the continuing resistance to their invasion and it doesn't look like they ever will. And, for the peace movement, everything that was dubious about this illegal and amoral war has been proven time and time again.

Kofi Annan declares that the war was not legal and what happens? The US starts manoeuvring to get rid of him.

The UN itself is now the target of the US neocons – almost a badge of honour, that seems to be becoming.

Mohammed Al-Baradei, the head of the UN nuclear agency is also a target for US manipulation and attack, apparently because he showed that he was a principled and honest man, not vulnerable to the US tactic of intimidation.

France became overnight a nation of cheese-eating surrender-monkeys – although quite what that description has to do with a nation that argued long and honourably against an illegal war escapes almost everybody not brainwashed by the excesses of Fox News.

And the peace movement itself, that massive movement which, for some unknown reason, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his ilk chose to ignore, even after the biggest demonstrations in Britain's political history, has again been proven right.

A war for oil? Nonsense, said Mr Blair, it's a war against a nation that ignored UN resolutions.

But then, when the UN chose not to go along tamely with the Blair-Bush axis, it became a war against a nation threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction.

However, when it became clear that Iraq didn't have any, it became a war to free Iraq from Saddam Hussein – although it would now seem that the Iraqis like the rule of invading armies even less than they liked rule by Saddam Hussein.

And now, the UN has set the clock right again. Sure enough, it was a war for oil.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney's Halliburton Oil, the US occupying authority and the current puppet government all come in for serious criticism. And for what? For ripping off Iraq with uncontested contracts, for spending Iraqi cash with neither authority nor recording of the transactions, for overstating costs, in short, for being a pack of thieving profiteers.

The state of poor, occupied and dominated Afghanistan should give us all an object lesson in what happens to countries who are invaded by the US to implement 'democracy.'

Russia now groans under the burden of ithat country's burgeoning heroin trade, with millions of Russian citizens addicted.

Democracy cannot be built by or under the yoke of imperialism or occupation by thieves and murderers, which amounts to the same thing.

It is a lesson that we should all take to heart.



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