After four years watching the disastrous consequences of the invasion of Iraq unfold, it's easy to forget the atmosphere of panic in which the war was sold to the American public.

All the talk of clandestine meetings in Prague, dubious connections between Iraq and 9/11, aluminum tubes and yellowcake from Niger is becoming a memory; it seems ages since we were warned that the "smoking gun" that proved Saddam's deadly intent might be in the form of a mushroom cloud rising from one of America's cities. 

Yet it’s important to recall that after all the rhetoric about Saddam Hussein's monstrous legacy and Colin Powell's flashy charts and honey-smooth presentation at the UN, the heart of the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq - or at least for its claims about massive stockpiles of biological weapons being driven around the country in high-tech mobile labs to avoid detection - was an Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball." 

Curveball: The Iraqi Defector The Bush Team Used To Sell The War 

 

and so, five years later, with more than a million Iraqis butchered & 4,000 American service men & women sacrificed & tens of thousands maimed for life; with US2.5 trillion washed down the stinking cesspit of the US military-industrial complex; with the freedoms & traditions of western liberal democracies proscribed in the name of ‘keeping us safe’; as the Palestinians in Gaza are ground down in the contemporary equivalent of the Warsaw ghetto & the price of oil hits US$90; whilst rattus tells awstralyens that they’ve never had it so good & the new world order continues its quest to destroy the planet unhindered, the bushit family of war criminals peddles the same lunatic fantasies that lead us here.

George "Uranium from Africa" Bushit wants to attack Iran. Just last week, the draft-dodging crook & serial liar said: "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from (obtaining) the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

Dead-eye "Greeted as Liberators" Cheney wants to attack Iran. This week, this draft-dodging crook & serial liar declared: "Our country and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions."

And Colin Powell’s replacement as Secretary of Excuses, conning Condoleezza "Mushroom Clouds" Rice also wants to attack Iran. Hawking the familiar spectre of a ‘mushroom cloud’ in every American living room, the former handmaiden of Halliburton said: "Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon."

All this as the US announced drastic new sanctions against a country that serious analysts say poses little threat to its neighbors and no real threat to the United States.

Is it really any wonder they hate our way of life?