We live in an age of public relations. What the spin meisters say is more important than what is. This is true for Malaysia as it is for the United States. What happened is not important, what the spin meister says is. The United States went to war in Iraq on a lie. But the world is told by the United States the lies do not matter, what was important is that Saddam is gone. In the runup to destroying Iraq, the United States let out that if Iraq continued to be ruled by Saddam it was a disaster for the United States. But is the United States more in more danger after Iraq had been destroyed? American proxies are now in power in Baghdad, those who govern cannot leave the former Saddam administrative centre, the so-called Green Zone, without being armed to the teeth, they do not travel to the countryside, except rarely but only if they watch their step.

THE SADDAM HUSSEIN TRIAL, like Slobodan Milosevic's, is political but conducted in Baghdad as a legal trial. The motto seems to be: First the trial, then the execution. It is presumed the defendants have no no case, so it is presumed by the prosecutors. And are shocked when the strong defence is made. They are tried under laws that did not exist at the time at the time the officences were allegedly committed, and became laws only after he was overthrown. The British. in its imperial glory, would have hanged them all before they were faced with scenes now shown to the world, if they thought they would get into the mess the Americans are now. But it is the Americans who rule, and they believe in the Queensbury's Rules even when fighting a war. The procedures of the court have not been fixed. Every hearing of the trial has been a slanging match between the judges and the defendants over whether the court was legal. The witnesses are allowed to make their statements in absentia. The witnesses are afraid to show their faces twenty years later, and when it clear Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants are history.

The United States lives in a dream world. The Sunnis are on the offensive, and is supported by the Middle East where 90 per cent of Muslims are Sunni. A guerrilla war is in force, causing havoc, and while the US says, weakly, is not playing according to the rules of warfare. The suicide bombings have made it difficult to withdraw US troops, as the US electorates wants them to. Yesterday, the suicide bombers went into a police academy in Baghdad, and killed 27 people including themselves. Meanwhile, the US invasion of Iraq has brought desolation in the 21st century as the Mongol invasion had in the 11th century. The US devastated Iraq as a tactic because it used air power to destroy. The insurgents kill in suicide attacks. And the US do not know how they can be stopped. US officials say that the bombs are 'smart' and be devastatingly accurate. But it cannot be, given the damage the US has caused. They would have created peace in a desert, if the Sunni underground was not strong. It is in talks with the US, and offered to bring in Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the reputed leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but the US peremptorily dismissed it. The election is coming in the US, and if the Bush administration shows to be giving in, it might have terrible consequences in the US. In a guerrilla war, there are no set piece battles. They will act unilaterally to bring down a static army. They will create fear among the people, already cowed with constant US bombing. All that the US can accuse the guerrillas is that they are not playing according to the rules. But the rules each follow are different. The US version is fiction, but it tries everyone to accept that as the truth.

The United States has invaded Iraq in 2003 as the Mongols had in the 11th century. The destruction is the same. The invaders behave the same. The Mongols destroyed Baghdad as the United States have done. The modern warfare of that the United States is its trump card. But the Mongols then had the latest method of warfare, that of fighting on horeseback. It was considered the most significant development of the period till 2000. Baghdad today would not be rebuilt, as the United States has promised, and Baghad was not rebuilt as the Mongols had promised. Meanwhile, both invading armies presided over the destruction of what made Baghdad unique. There is already pressure on the United States to withdraw before it has rebuilt Iraq. It is now engaged in rebuilding the new Iraqi army in its own image. The television and radio news from Iraq reports that it is not up to standard. Yet, the Iraqi army was hyped as the fourth largest in the world, and how difficult it would be for the US army to defeat it. Once the war started, it was described as a paper army. But the Iraqi military commanders under Saddam conducted the war which saved his fighting troops by rotating them around with the recruits. The 'recruits' who were saved were in fact trained troops, who now lead the insurgency. The United States did not want these troops. It created its own. But they are no good, says United States Army commanders. They United States hopes to leave them in charge of Iraq while they leave. But the former army has joined the insurgency. Iraq is in a mess as bad as the Mongols left it.

There is a lot that can be written about Malaysia's relations with the outside world. And those in the execution can or should write their version of it. These days it is about the pomp and circumstance of the job and little else so that the reader knew little at the beginning as at the end. We do not write books here because it takes a long time, and the returns are often not as much. Money causes many to write books on retirement. So they keep diaries, which are published after they retire. Almost every one in the West keep diaries. There is a restriction on civil servants in most countries, but not as restrictive as it is in Malaysia or Singapore. Reading Malaysian or Singaporean accounts, unless they include their actions against the other or about bilateral spats, makes one feel that all if well and nothing can spoil it. It is much like Iraq after the invasion. The United States and its allies speak as if they are not responsible for the destruction of the land, and operate from their fortress in what is known as the Green Zone. If you believe them, it is a safe place to go to. The secretary-general of the United Nations, after having allowed one of its members to be invaded, now talks of bringing that invaded country into the world. But the UN is the handmaiden of the US. Various figures from the West make a hazardous attempt to come into Baghdad by air, and talk to the press of the improvements made, but the murders, mayhem, and disruption continues. There is no word of that. But this is the report we have come to expect.

What gets through to the world outside is particularly audacious attacks. The bombing of the Palestine hotel last week is one. The insurgents did it, the American-run cabal in Iraq tells us. We are also told that no US troops can be seen on the roads of Baghdad and those in Humvees and other military vehicles are told not to entertain Iraqis within ten feet. The American troops regard the Iraqi as their enemy. But could not the Palestine hotel bombing be the work of Iraqis who would do anything for money. The reporting in becoming more hostile, and the United States would like them to leave. What better way to force them to leave by bombing their residence and work place in Bangkok? I do not buy the theory that is current on television networks and newspapers, not yet, that it is the Iraqi nationalist who did it. Not when the British raided a police station under its command to rescue British troops caught setting off a car bomb, and two US troops were caught for the same reason. This is information war. So, news that is not favourable to the invading force is not revealed or when revealed, is brutally put down. The public the world over is fed with "official" views that all is well. The reality is worse. The Muslim, not only in Iraq, will not hear of any attacks on his religion, as a Christian would not in the United States or Europe or the world over. Each look upon the other as they are. In practical terms, the lowest common belief matters. The war against the adjective is deliberately taken to Iraq but it is actually against Muslims. In this period of racial equalty, the West will not say it, but in practice it is.

But it was Britain who made the Sunni in charge when Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire. It knew at that time that the Sunnis were in the minority, but it distrusted the Shias and the Kurds and wanted to cosy up to the Arab Sunni which ruled the rest of the Middle East. It knew then, and with the US now, that neighbouring Syria had a Shia leadership with a Sunni population. In 1958, when Britain finally left Iraq after a revolution, in the course of which the Sunni prime minister of Iraq was flayed alive after being caught by the crowd in a woman's dress, the Sunni leadership took over, and Saddam Hussein is the latest before the American invasion. It is strong armed ruled, like in any Arab country, but Saddam turned Iraq into the leading, secular Arab State. CNN and BBC would suggest that Iraq is now progressing better than Saddam, what with its new constitution, but the reality is something else. I visited Baghdad just before the Iraq- Iran war, and returned to my hotel in the early hours of the morning alone. I would do so in daylight in Baghdad today if I wanted to commit suicide and was too cowardly to do so personally but still wanted to die. Even the ministers are confined to the Green Zone, and the constitutional referendum took place without ministers going out to explain it or the people even understood it. There will be an election within three months under the new constituition, but the Sunni will stay away, although the Iraqi government will get a few Sunni groups to join it and take part, and the results will be a sham.

THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ vote in a referendum tomorrow (October 15), not knowing what they are voting for. The United States and Britain has given their blessings. But the president and cabinet ministers, secure (so they think) in the Green Zone and not daring to go out, even to the airport, for fear of assassination or ambush, discuss the constituition as if it is the US or Italian or Malaysian. The people do not know what it is about for no politician has discussed it with him. Not even in Baghdad. The referendum tomorrow has no relevance for the future of Iraq. It is surreal, the referendum is conducted to American home requirements, and will produce nothing. The moral will still remains with the Iraqi, who is fed up with seeing his own country invaded by foreigners. The Americans made the biggest mistake of all in refusing the Sunni any role. The constituiton was drawn up by the Shias and the Kurds. Iraq did not have a written constitution. But so does Great Britain. The Sunnis boycotted the election. Sundry Sunni groups are co-opted to write the constituiton, but these groups represent only themselves, if at all. The US is now trying to get Sunni groups not to boycott it. There is no or little coverage of the referendum the past two weeks. Even the invaders know that if the referendum is lost, they cannot withdraw their troops on their own timetable. If the referendum is won, then it is a hard slog to the next target, which is the elections early next year. The Sunnis, who are excluded from drafting the constition, are not likely to take part in it. The invading force, which is what the Americans and all its allies are, is stuck in a quagmire, much like in Vietnam forty years ago but worse. The Sunni Muslim is the dominant religion in the Arab lands. Saddam Hussein, once the CIA's great asset, has now become the Arab's, Iraqi Sunnis and Iraq's hero. He is on trial next week, but here again the invading force made a mistake. He is put on trial during the Ramadan fasting month, again to the American schedule. He has won the victory, whether he is hanged or not. Every miscalculation on him and the Sunnis are to the advantage of both Sunnis and Iraqis.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI HAS left the "security" of the Green Zone for the "security" of London. He wanted to tell the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of his government's plan for the referendum on October 15. But neither he nor members of his government has visited the people of Iraq of what the referendum brings. It is too unsafe. He and his ministers have not ventured out of the Green Zone for fear of being killed by the people. In President Talabani's terms, those people who are against the referendum and those who create mayhem in Iraq are terrorists, and should be eradicated, preferably by the United States or Britain or by the other countries who are part of the US-established multi-lateral force. But the insurgency would not last if locals do not support it, as President Talabani should know by now. First the country is invaded, then the election is set so that the elected are kept isolated in the Green Zone, and those elected ask those who put them in power to remain. President Talabani was "thankful" in London for the multinational effort in Iraq. He blamed Iraqis for protesting against the US-led invasion, as "Saddam Hussein as a bad man". But the United States dealt with the "bad man" for nearly 30 years, had made him a prime CIA source, like Osama bin Laden, and then turned against him, because he did not agree with Washington's plans for the region. President Talabani now faces Saddam Hussein in this attempt to turn Iraq into a US colony. The British tried it earlier, turning the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia provinces of the Ottoman Empre, and called it Iraq after the first world war. They knew their Middle Eastern history, and made sure the Sunnis, who formed 20 per cent of Iraq, as the rulers. They formed Iraq to defeat the French colonial power, who took Syria earlier, and established a Shia president there although he was from a minority Shia sect, the Aluwaites. Nearly 80 per cent of Syrians are Sunnis. The Prime Minister of Iraq, dressed in a woman's dress and flayed alive in Baghdad in 1958 was a Sunni Muslim. The governments that followed is Sunni, of which the latest is Saddam Hussein, which the Americans, like a bull in a China shop, erased, and brought about the present civil war.

ABU MUSAB ZARKAWI's dozen top lieutenants have been killed in Iraq, say the US military, but the mayhem, including the killing, caused by his group would continue without any let up. Abu Musab Zarkawi, in case you are wondering who he is, is, again according to the US military, Al Qaeda's top man in Iraq. Probably he is. But he is probably more adept at getting lieutenants than the US military gives him credit for. Al-Qaeda had chosen him for just that capability, among others, for it is fighting a battle in Iraq in which public relations, particularly Western, is not on its side. The Al-Qaeda would not have landed in Iraq had Saddam Hussein been in power. He was very firm about not letting them in, and he did not allow either the Shias or religious groups be in power. And you could walk around after midnight in Baghdad during his rule. The US invaded Iraq to throw him out. Today, he is in jail and would probably be hanged, but he is fighting the Arab cause, and he welcomes anyone, including Al Qaeda, on his side. And made sure civil war will break out once the US withdraw, as they would have to do, not for exigencies of the situation in Iraq, but that the American people do not want the troops there. Now it is a civil and religious war, with Saddam, whom the Arab countries hated in office but support him how, and the US is caught in a cleft stick. The US has turned Iraq from a well run Arab country to one fit for civil war, but not before bombing the place with nuclear weapons and with conventional weapons so that like in Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II, Iraqis have to live with the after effects of that. US soldiers alreadty face the after-effects of handling the depleted uraniam bullets, and the US army has plans to quarantine those who handle depleted uranium bullets. The US believes that the people of Iraq will be grateful to them for the invasion of their country. They were talking of flowers thrown at them by grateful Iraqis for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. They made a war, and made a mess of it. And they would have to pay for it. It is Vietnam all over again, though the precise position of the Vietnamese and the Iraqis are different, and the battles are different now and 40 years ago.

The war in Iraq has brought Al Qaeda into the country, and all Muslim fighters, most are from the ground, into the country. These people do not read newspapers, listen to pontificating statements on television or read 'think' pieces in the main newspapers in the West. And they do not accept Islam to be what they say it should be. In Arabia, Sunni Islam rules. In Iraq, it does not. The United States invaded Iraq and disbanded the Sunni Muslim from their posts in the government, allegedly for being a Baathist. But the Sunni rule in Iraq was ensured by the British, in a race with France for colonial hegomony in the Middle East. They ruled Iraq for 30 years, and lost out when its Sunni prime minister, dressed in a woman's dress, complete with the hijab, was flayed alive by the crowd in Baghdad when he was caught out. The subsequent rulers were Sunni, of which Saddam Hussein was the latest. In thumbing for Shia religious rule, Britain was dismantling its own creation, and turned, with American help, into a mess. Saddam Hussein was hated in the Middle East, but the ineptitude of the West in Iraq has allowed Saddam to be a Sunni martyr. He knows he will be hanged. But he will be hanged a martyr in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Iraq has become an ungovernable country, with the West, particularly the United States, making mistakes that will prove Samuel Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilisations,

The government cannot fight corruption alone. All must join in, insist of ethical values and integrity. Or all will come to nought. Societies like the KLSTI works with the government to root out corruption. Pak Lah said what was expected of him. He went off to attend the ASEM meeting in Hanoi. It did not take long for his words to be challenged. The Iraq Survey Group, which for 18 months had investigated Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, found instead weapons of mass corruption. There were no WMD, they found, embarrassing the two totem poles who insist Saddam must be destroyed at any cost because they had. This report is causing political waves in the US and Britain. So, the spin moved sharply to what Saddam did with the UN oil-for-food programme, which allowed Baghdad to sell its oil to buy food for its people. The sanctions continued in the meanwhile, and the ISG, in its trawling of official documents, found countries and inviduals all over the world who allegedly benefited, for personal gain, by partaking in it. It provided the much need diversion from the political flak in London and Washington.

If Washington's rhetoric is believed, it is the Iraqis in control of Iraq now. This is not true of course. All Washington has allowed the Iraqi government is to take the blame and the casualties for the deteriorating security. If Iraq wants a Malaysian medical mission, the request should have come from Baghdad, not Washington. If Malaysia accepts Iraq is an independent country, what it did now is inexplicable. It accepts Iraq is not independent, yet allows it to open an embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

It now is certain he would be pardoned, with no further action against him. If he was, as it is made out, a traitor, is that the punishment? But he cannot be charged - as, in Baghdad, Mr Saddam Hussein - without the accuser becoming the accused. The Pakistan armed forces, his ultimate employer, is off the hook. President Musharraf, who could not be unaware of Dr Khan's actions from the beginning since he was in power then, is off the hook. He had to be. Otherwise, Washington cannot pursue as vigorously its war on terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That the Pakistani leader had foiled two assassination attempts on his life underscores Washington's conundrum. Each needs the other, which is why someone like Dr Khan is targetted.

That they think so is an unintended fallout of globalisation. It became an issue to beat the more vibrant economies of the new world, all non-European, which could challenge their former colonial masters on their home ground. This is not good for the Christian ethic. The current anti-Islam movement, euphemistically dubbed the "war on terror", is the most dangerous manifestation of that. Two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, is proof of what this can bring forth. Iraq, with Lebanon, the most sophisticated of Middle East societies, could not be allowed to exist without an obvious guardian, and so they are destroyed. The Paris of the Middle East is now the Kabul. The secular sophistication of Baghdad, the successor of the cradle of civilisation, is now lawlessness personified.

The Anglo-American destruction of Baghdad is as bad, if not worse, than Hulegu Khan's in 1258. Then the Tigris waters turned black with the ink of its priceless libraries; today the skies of Baghdad are dark with the smoke from the burning libraries. It is this that will be remembered long after the United States has gone on to pacify other inconvenient states. It now appears there was a deliberate pattern in the looting, the destroy the past so the present could be rebuilt anew, so Iraq would be a culture without a past, like the United States, and thereby create a culture in Washington's likeness. Cultural destruction will remain in the people's mind long after the event that led to it is forgotten. In England, it is the destruction of the monasteries, and the destruction of its priceless treasures, is remembered than King Henry VIII, who ordered it. We have forgotten Hulegu Khan, not what he did. In fact, the worse destruction came later the 13th century, when his cousin, Timur the Lame, Tamerlene in the West, sacked Baghdad, but that is all but forgotten.

The Anglo-American forces control of Saddam International Airport, renamed it Baghdad, and three days later, tenuously. In 16 days of operations, it has taken no territory, caused horrendeous damage, laid waste Iraq's infrastructure, the only victory, if you could call it that, is the rescue of 19-year-old Jessica Lynch from Iraqi hands. The Iraqi reaction was to make the invaders fight horrendously to seize control. By so doing, it has stretched the Anglo-American forces thinly, and makes it easier for the irregular Iraqi forces to hit them at will. The daily briefings of Anglo-American success and self-delusion now takes on the quality of the infamous daily Saigon Five O'Clock Follies of the Vietnam War. It had marched into Iraq convinced that a proud nation of even prouder people would exchange their independence for foreign domination, however much they hate their ruler. As a Muslim philosopher said a millennium ago, better live under a murderous, dictatorial sultan for a hundred years than one year in social chaos.

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN INVASION OF Iraq - in one irrelevant sense, no different from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 12 years earlier - is lost even before it began. Fourteen days into the confidently predicted short, sharp blitzkreig, the 'shock and awe' of the awesome techologically wizardry of its electronic 'slash-and-burn' weapons of mass destruction turns the invading force into a 21st century version of Halegu Khan's siege of Baghdad in 1278. President Bush, like Genghis Khan's grandson, had no plans for Baghdad but to lay it waste as destructively, fearsomely, devastatingly. Halegu Khan's forces on the outskirts of Baghdad at the start of the second millennium AD is as precise as President George Bush's at the start of the third millennium AD. The Mongol hordes was as feared a fighting force then as the American forces now are. The aim is to lay waste, gobble what can be looted and stolen, and head on other fabled wealth of the Middle East, including oil.

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN COALITION DEFIED THE UNITED Nations to lay waste Iraq, had no qualms of how right it is, was sure the Shias in the south and the Kurds in the North would welcome them as liberators, but seven days into the war cannot even capture small towns without heavy losses. More than a hundred soldiers have died, half a dozen captured, several missing and hundreds wounded in a reaction that shocked it. The US and UK had stepped up the propaganda months earlier, about the new Hitler in the block, how dowtrodden and fearful his people were, how they could not wait for an Anglo-American force, with or without United Nations support, to destroy the leaders, and how the Iraqis would come out to greet them as liberators and join them to defeat the hated dictator in Baghdad. So widespread was this believed by President George W. Bush and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, that President Saddam Hussein was told bluntly he had better disappear if he valued his life. The propaganda ratcheted to a crescendo that when the bombing started, and the war began, the liberators found their way blocked by the very Iraqis they had come to liberate.

When it threatens a country, it does not matter which, it touches a raw diplomatic nerve. In Europe and elsewhere. When that is perceived as a national humiliation, as it is in France, Germany, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Angola, Mexico, Chile, Pakistan, Washington is forced into a corner. When a country is told it is ungrateful for all Washington had done for it in the past when it raises a legitimate objection, it would be less inclined to compromise. When the stakes rise, it rebels. France was in anguish if it would ever use a veto against the US. It would: Mr Bush and Mr Blair made that decision for them. Similarly, Iraq is so humiliated, in public, that the attacking force faces a more formidable forces than a month ago. When President Saddam gives out guns and other weapons to the people of Baghdad to defend themselves against the attackers, it shows he, not Mr Bush nor Mr Blair, read the undercurrents rightly. As their impotence grows, they lash out at all and sundry. They could not force even the UN to sing to its tune. And now it wants to reduce the UN and NATO to a cipher. Even to let the UN go the way of the League of Nations. President Bush's grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, would not allow the US to join the League of Nations after President Woodrow Wilson had helped in its formation after World War I, and in so doing helped destroy it. President Bush now wants to make the UN as impotent.

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