The liberators are seen as unwanted occupiers

GEORGE W BUSH is scheduled to visit Ireland this weekend, despite widespread abhorrence in this country of his belligerent foreign policy and, more particularly, of the illegitimate and immoral occupation of Iraq.

The brutal US occupation was highlighted most starkly by the mass killing of civilians at Fallujah, the massacre of a wedding party on the Syrian border, and by the publication of photographs exposing the physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US forces.

The rape of women detainees has received much less attention, but that is also a feature of US military rule in that tragic country. This brutality is being visited on a society that suffered more than enough under Saddam’s iron fist.