IRAQ

The new nation: How arrogant was the path to war by Robert Fisk

How arrogant was the path to war. As US President Bush now desperately tries to cajole the old UN donkey to rescue him from Iraq - he who warned us that the UN was in danger of turning into a League of Nations "talking shop" if it declined him legitimacy for his invasion - we are supposed to believe that no one in Washington could have guessed the future.

The neoconservative, pro-Israeli American "advisers" around Donald Rumsfeld - unsurprisingly silent now that their pre-war enthusiasm has trapped 146,000 American troops in the biggest rat's nest in the Middle East - say only that "mistakes" were made in their assumptions.

Messers Bush and Blair fantasized their way to war with all those mythical weapons of mass destruction and "imminent threats" from Iraq - whether of the 45-minute variety or not - and of the postwar 'liberation', 'democracy' and map-changing they were going to bestow upon the region. But the record shows just how many warnings the Bush administration received from sane and decent men in the days before we plunged into this terrible adventure.