A few brief points on the Iraq war

• The Iraq war was originally initiated to prevent a regime from deploying weapons of mass destruction.

There were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq.

• The reason for the Iraq war was then framed as a humanitarian crusade to liberate people from a brutal regime.

Every day Iraq creeps closer and closer to civil war. The average daily death tally in Iraq is rising, not declining. There will be a catastrophic rise in the death toll when civil war takes hold. Basic services - such as electricity, sanitation, and health services - have shown a demonstrable decline. More and more it is looking like the eventual rulers of Iraq will be Shiite Islamic fundamentalists. The eventual result of Shiite rule will be the imposition of sharia law. I wonder if women, when they're forced to wear headscarves, when they're murdered for adultery real or imagined, will feel liberated.

• Slowly the terms of reference for the Iraq war were changed: the Iraq war, we're told, had to happen to stop the spread of terror in the world. If one doesn't support the war one is "with the terrorists".

Well, in a sick way this last point is true. Iraq wasn't originally a haven for terrorists; in fact it's logical that a tyrannical, but ultimately secular, dictator in the Middle East would have more to fear from religious fanatics than western leaders would. But the imperialist symbol of American military occupation has whipped up Islamic resentment, and allowed Iran to play an ever-increasing roll in Iraqi affairs. Now Iraq, and the symbol of Iraq, is a great terrorist attractor and, war or not, the US is unable to do anything about it.

• What of today?

The terms of reference have swung again. Conservative pundits are now claiming that a civil war in Iraq is just the thing that they desired. The president's "We'll fight them over there so that we don't have to fight them here" [the quote is not verbatim] rhetoric marks the shift. What he's really saying is this: let war reign in the Middle East so that we don't have any problems at home; after all there may be normal, decent people in Iraq, but they aren't Americans, and therefore their lives are worth less (or worthless if you will). At least faux news (Fox News) has the courage to state the new, freshly manufactured nuance concerning the Iraq war in plain English:

"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"