"Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country," warned President Bush just two weeks before launching the war. U.S. troops will be greeted as "liberators," the Vice President predicted. A servile press corps, perhaps better called a press corpse, went along and asked few questions. Washington invades Iraq on totally false pretenses and then turns a SNAFU into a FUBAR with "Mission Accomplished" photo ops, bogus stories about Jessica Lynch, endless turning points, tipping points, milestones and a so-called surge. Meanwhile in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, the U.S. is building the largest embassy in the world, elsewhere in Iraq it has built permanent bases. For Iraqis, the carnage is destroying their country, one of the cradles of civilization.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. She appears as commentator/analyst on PBS, NPR, BBC, and CBC. She's the author of Before & After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis and Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN. Her latest books are Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Challenging Empire.