It is, of course, irony of a prophetic sort, that on the first anniversary of the “Liberation of Iraq,” the Iraqis (or at least a significant number of them) are hell bent on liberating Iraq from the Liberators.

At the end of the week before Easter the death toll of young Americans during the past year reached the 660 mark and rising. The same number of Iraqis were killed in just that week.

Americans have little interest in, and do not count up, the violent deaths of the citizens of Iraq. They do pay attention to their own body count, attested to by the current practice of the Bush White House to suppress news of casualties from publication, especially the numbers of those wounded in action and sent home, forbidding television cameras from recording the unloading of coffins and stretchers from transport planes as they land in the U.S.

But the message is getting out, and the awareness is awakening amongst Americans that they have once again been sucked into an unwinnable war for all the wrong reasons. The war was constructed on moral quicksand and that sucking sound is the sound of quicksand closing in on the innocents dying for the sake of political egos.

As someone once said, a war is not over until the loser quits. There has never been a surrender in Iraq. What you hear nowadays is the term that is often used to connote a rebellion against established and lawful authority — an insurgency. Like most insurgencies, this one is being carried out as guerrilla warfare, the classic response of a rebel force against superior manpower and firepower. But by any other name and by any other tactics, what we have here is a continuation of the war George Bush said was over as he strutted about that aircraft carrier, back last May. It is an impossible situation for the United States. The rebellion is spreading. The confrontations are taking place in a growing number of cities, towns and villages. For an insurgency to succeed the people must support it, if not actively, then passively. Remember Mao’s dictum? The guerrillas are the fish and the people the stream. Clearly, that is what is happening in Iraq.

The Americans cannot continue to increase their use of firepower as their only tactic. That would inevitably bring on more deaths of innocents, more damage to buildings and infrastructure, more alienation with Iraqis joining the battle on the side of the insurgents.

But the American response has been to characterize the rebels as gangsters, thugs and criminals, and to portray the insurgency as a simple police action. It is anything but, and the sentiment to throw the Americans out is gathering momentum every day as the death toll mounts for both sides and those caught betwixt and between.

And now the so-called “Coalition” is coming apart. Some countries of the coalition which contributed troops to the “liberation” of Iraq (often under heavy economic pressure by the United States), are bringing them home in response to the clamour at home. Many of the countries will not let their soldiers fight in the current attempt at pacification of the insurgency. They do not want to be portrayed as “occupiers” and the governments of those countries fear the political backlash if they start taking casualties.

It is predicted by some experts that the United States and Great Britain will soon be left to soldier on alone in their battle to force democracy on the citizens of Iraq — the war and the peace both lost to history, the “war on terror” having been hi-jacked to satisfy the inexplicable needs of Empire America.

It is useful to remember that only in the dream cycles of George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is there any connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein (remember him?) and Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the events of 9/11.

Nonetheless, the events in Iraq formed the backdrop for the testimony of Condoleezza Rice, the American President’s Chief Security Advisor before the special commission investigating the Bush government’s response to the threats of Al Qaeda, and the horrible events of 9/11.

Rice was a reluctant participant in the committee’s investigative process. Once there, she was cool, capable and seemingly unflappable. She was also evasive, playing word games, retreating wherever possible to extended explanations of the structural niceties of the FBI, the CIA and every other governmental impediment she could dredge up.

In sum, she seemed to be saying that “underlings” (the FBI and CIA) were responsible for any lapse in security that might have led to the events of 9/11. In any case, it all had nothing to do with her, her boss or anyone else associated with either of them at the highest levels of government.

Except there was this memo, the one headed, “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” the one the President saw (maybe even read) on August 6, 2001, 36 days before 9/11.

“Condi” (as the boys in the White House like to call her) said it was a “historical” document without a clear warning of threat to the United States. She seemed put out that Osama’s army had not listed an exact date, time and place for the American intelligence gatherers to write down. Her boss said the same thing the day after the memo was made public.

What the document did say was that Osama’s boys were loose in the United States, and that they had been for some years; that Osama intended retaliation for the U.S. bombings in Afghanistan in Washington and one other large city; that the FBI had reported “patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings…”

“The PDB (President’s Daily Briefing) was no indication of a terrorist threat,” responded the President.

It was another American President, a fellow named Harry Truman, who once said, “the buck stops here.”

George Bush seems to be saying, “What buck?”