"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

This was a summation verdict issued at The International Tribunal at Nuremburg that convicted the leaders of the Third Reich for their crimes committed during the Second World War.

These words are just as appropriate today as they were almost 60 years ago, when we consider that on the 20th of March 2003, an illegal Anglo-American invasion against the people of Iraq was launched, flouting all international laws and conventions in the process.

We are now into the sixth year of this brutal occupation, almost comparable on a time-scale to the Second World War.

As is now universally recognised, the war was prepared in 2002 with a campaign of deliberate lies and fabrications about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda. At the time of the invasion, a majority of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of 9/11, a third still believe that, as did 90 percent of soldiers deployed in Iraq in 2006.

Using the trump cards of terrorism, freedom and democracy and I hasten to add, backed by a relentless propaganda campaign waged by both political parties and backed by a subservient media. The implementation of a long-prepared plan to seize control of a country holding the word’s second-largest proven oil reserves and turn it into a platform for the extension of US military power throughout the region was rolled out.

In the five years since the invasion, we have not only seen the original lies thoroughly exposed, but also a complete discrediting of the government and its foreign policy in the eyes of the world’s population.

According to the most credible estimates, it has cost the lives of over one and a half million Iraqis, while turning over four and a half million more into refugees, driven by violence and destruction either out of their country or into internal exile, this with a country which had a pre-war population of thirty seven million.

A poll released this week (Click here for the full Iraq Poll) found that nearly half of the residents of Baghdad said at least one family member had been killed since the occupation began.

The same poll found that over 70 percent of Iraqis want occupying troops out of their country, Some 81 percent had suffered power cuts and 43 percent had experienced drinking water shortages. In the last month 28 percent had been short of food. These facts are testimony that life under occupation has gotten progressively worse, worse still, these facts are consistently ignored by the political establishment and the mass media.

The divide-and-rule strategy which has been employed by the occupiers attempts to fashion a puppet regime based on ethnic politics has created conditions rife for a savage sectarian war that has claimed untold victims and "ethnically cleansed" large sections of Baghdad and other areas where Shia, Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis had previously lived side-by-side.

The very same ideals of freedom, democracy and human rights have been violated by those who went to give it to the Iraqi people. These have included the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Haditha killings of 24 civilians, the use of white phosphorous on the civilian population of Fallujah , the gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and the murder of her family in Mahmoudiya, and the bombing and shooting of civilians in Mukaradeeb.

Once the warmongers had invaded, crushed and occupied a country that was no threat to anyone. They stood by as it was looted, exacerbated sectarianism, flattened entire towns, tortured untold numbers of innocents, brought in gum-chewing, tattooed foreign mercenaries and paid crony companies billions of dollars for mythical reconstruction projects.

They then pretended to hand over sovereignty to that country while at the same time constructing permanent bases and the biggest US Embassy in history resembling a small city. They said they had no interest in Iraq's oil, yet they are putting immense pressure on the Iraqi government to sign into law a bill that permits foreign (read American) oil companies to lock up decades-long deals. Let's be frank. Iraq wasn't a blunder, it was a crime, a war crime.

What makes this situation even more despicable is that the politicians responsible for them have not been held to account, despite the fact that so many of us in this country opposed the war. Have no doubt about it we are now in a very precarious period in world politics, a period in which our politicians are not being held accountable for their actions or for their lies.

The current incumbent of number 10 Downing Street will tell you that it was Tony Blair’s war. The government has pulled all its tricks to make us believe that it was Blair’s decision alone to go to war, and that now that he’s gone, this government no longer has the blood of those butchered in Iraq on its hands.

Well I tell you no….396 members of parliament voted to go to war, in case I’m horribly mistaken, nearly all of these are still sitting in parliament today, have they too been absolved of their sins like old Tony has?

Only a perverse mindset and one that has a criminal indifference to the loss of human life, could candidly state America’s colonial-style war in Iraq is "a fantastic experience" and "in some ways romantic." Step forward Mr. President Bush.

Equally delusional were the comments made by Vice President Dick Cheney during an unannounced visit to Baghdad. Cheney called the five-year war a "successful endeavour" that "has been well worth the effort."

Over the last 10 days most media outlets have been focusing on the intricacies of military and political strategies and often neglect the effect of the last five years on millions of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Unless you have lived in a war zone, it is hard to conceive the extent to which Iraqi society has been shattered by this ongoing conflict.
Do you ever think for one moment that the people in Iraq may have the same worries as you and I?

The parents are worried for their children’s education, safety and future, they have the stresses about how to pay their bills, how they are going to get to work if they have a job, or how they are going to find a job, do you stop and think that they have to try and make sense about their hardships and the struggles to maintain their sanity while the world around them crumbles into the abyss.

Iraq has gone from being the cradle of civilisation to becoming a country which has had a psyche of war culture thrown into its children's playgrounds.

A whole generation of minds are being changed from living under a murderous regime, and we have to seriously think whether its possible to change them back to stop Iraq's future from being a bloody one.

I ask the people, didn’t it hurt us so bad when 57 people lost their lives on 7th July 2005 in London?

But Iraq has its “7/7” everyday, and has done for the last five years.

What are the differences?

Do we turn a blind eye because they are Iraqi’s whose blood is so cheap it deserves to be spilt in the name of freedom and democracy?

Is it that they are thousands of miles away from our shores that it doesn’t really bother us?

Gordon Brown yesterday promised to hold an enquiry into the "mistakes" made in Iraq. It sounds good doesn’t it? but don't hold your breath.
All previous inquiries have been "whitewashes".

They can't afford the truth to come out, or else they might get a one-way ticket to The Hague.

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