Satisfied leaders in denial of truth

ON Wednesday, US President George W Bush received Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in the White House. Talabani’s remarks to Bush could have been written by Karl Rove.

In a never-ending flurry of ‘thank yous’ that made Barry McGuigan sound like a dour ingrate, he paid tribute to Bush for liberating Iraq and restoring democracy.

Ah, the heady days in March and April of 2003 when the US-led military onslaught over-ran an entire country in a few weeks. But even then there were signs that not everything was going according to the manicured plan that read: good guys oust evil dictator; then liberate the downtrodden masses, bringing freedom and democracy to the region’s only country with secular potential.