Instahoglets "Rosepetals" Anniversary Edition. 19th Mar. 06

We've a bumper crop of hoglets today, folks. Today's the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq - time to look at some news and views reflecting the world this week, three years gone.

Don Rumsfeld has an op-ed in the WaPo today. For Rummie, gains or losses are measured in election numbers that were increased by Sunni wishes to not be victims of a Shiite hegemony and battalions of Iraqis who can't fight without American logistics, artillery and air support. He fails to mention utter lack of consensus government, mounds of dead Iraqis killed in sectarian feuds, ministry death squads and militia running rampant or the failed and corrupt reconstruction effort which means Iraqis have less of the basics like power and water than ever. He says the terrorists are on the run and cites a year old, possibly bogus, letter as proof. He likewise fails to mention the words of Dan Senor, the coalition's senior spokesman at the time:

"So if there is an attack against Shiia leadership, or there is an attack against a Shiia holy site, the various ethnic leaders won't be easily drawn into reprisals, because that's exactly what Zarqawi and al Qaeda are trying to provoke in this country."

Because, of course, that Shiite restraint is exactly what happened...NOT!

Which is why Iraq's former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, until now a neocon favourite, can tell the BBC "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

The new Iraqi government is getting nowhere because even the Shiite bloc is now threatening to break up into factions as they wrangle over plum posts. Imagine the disaster if the factions, each with its own militia, end up at each other's throats in more than just a political forum. That is by no means a new concept but it's one that Bush and the neocons have been blind to.

Undeterred by his Iraqi "success", Dear Leader has once again given himself the right to wage "pre-emptive" wars - that's "wars of aggression" to everyone else on the planet - should he feel the need. No hint in his National Security Strategy that he will ever bother to ask Congress for permission to start another war or ask the people how they feel about his blitzkreigs though. UN approval? You must be kidding!

The Raven's View blog thinks Bush's insistence on a doctrine of aggressive pre-emption is "classic abuse survivor mentality". I just think he's a sociopath.

The only people really benefitting from Bush's warmongering have been the arms makers and dealers. Lockheed, for instance, are going to be at least $200 billion better off from the new Joint Strike Fighter program alone- and the Pentagon have helped push the final price upward by not asking for proper testing first according to the Government Accountability Office.

Now the Pentagon plans to get some more of that moolah for itself. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the part of the Pentagon that makes it easier for foreign buyers to get their hands on American killing ingenuity by introducing them to US arms companies, is to raise its fees.

The US says Iran is interferring in Iraq. Iran says that Britain and the US are trying to foment sectarian war between Sunni and Shiite there. They are blaming British intelligence for supporting bandits in in the south-eastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan who shot and killed 21 government officials on Thursday.

Double standards at work - when is a nuclear test not a nuclear test? When it's sub-critical. Here's how the US and UK are developing a new range of nuclear warheads while making waves over a nation no-one has proven is after nukes at all. That doctrine of pre-emption does require some fancy footwork to justify all those wars and all those new weapons, after all.

Some of that fancy footwork can be seen in the freeper circus over those newly released documents from Saddam-era Iraq. Here's Judd at Think Progress administering a well deserved woodshedding to the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes for his latest feeble attempt to say the US was right to invade Iraq because Al Qaida were in the Phillipines.

The war in Iraq and the Bush years in general have proven so successful, in fact, that GOP campaigners are scared stiff of running on their record to date and instead plan to change the subject. Here's the Weakly Standard again admitting just how much of a botch job the last three years of Republican misrule have been and advocating hiding the facts from the electorate by blaming the Dems.