A difficulty in explaining Iraq to the outside world is that since 2003 the US and British governments have produced a series of spurious turning points. There was the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, the supposed hand back of sovereignty in June 2004, the two elections and the new constitution in 2005 and - recently - the military "surge" into Baghdad. In all cases the benefits of these events were invented or exaggerated.

After Sunni fundamentalists blew up the golden-domed Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra in February last year, central Iraq was torn apart by sectarian fighting. Baghdad broke up into a dozen hostile cities, Sunni and Shia, which fired mortars at each other. Government ministries, if controlled by different communities, fought each other. The Shia-controlled Interior Ministry kidnapped 150 people from the Sunni-held Higher Education Ministry and killed many of them. (my emphasis)

No sooner had Saddam Hussein fallen than Iraqis were left in no doubt that they had been occupied not liberated. The army and security services were dissolved. As an independent state Iraq ceased to exist. "The Americans want clients not allies in Iraq," lamented one Iraqi dissident who had long lobbied for the invasion in London and Washington.

Guerrilla war against the US forces by the five million strong Sunni community erupted with extraordinary speed and ferocity. By summer 2003, whenever I went to the scene of a bomb attack or an ambush of US soldiers I would find jubilant Iraqis dancing for joy around the pools of drying blood on the road or the smouldering Humvee vehicles. ...

So dangerous is it to travel anywhere in Iraq outside Kurdistan that it is difficult for journalists to provide evidence of the slaughter house the country has become without being killed themselves. Mr Blair and Mr Bush have long implied that the violence is confined to central Iraq. This lie should have been permanently nailed by the Baker-Hamilton report written by senior Republicans and Democrats, which examined one day last summer when the US military had announced that there had been 93 attacks and discovered that the real figure was 1,100. In other words the violence was being understated by a factor of 10. (my emphasis)

Allowing widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, on the grounds that "stuff happens," "democracy is messy," and "how many vases can they have?" [the allusion is to Rummy's ditsy ranting about how the looting was no big deal] - and thus signalling that there would be no serious attempt to provide law and order in American Iraq. (my emphasis)

In explaining the evolution of violent instability in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the collapse of the Iraqi state is of far greater significance than the upsurge of communal antipathies or indeed the ineptitude of Iraq’s new ruling elite.

The entrance of US troops into Baghdad in April 2003 resulted in the death of the Iraqi state. Faced with the widespread lawlessness that is common after violent regime change, the US did not have the numbers of troops needed to control the situation. After three weeks of violence and looting, the state’s administrative capacity was destroyed; 17 of Baghdad’s 23 ministry buildings were completely gutted. Looters first took portable items of value such as computers, then furniture and fittings.

By the time I reached Baghdad a month after the US forces, looters were systematically stripping electric wiring from the walls of former government buildings to sell for scrap. Following the destruction of government infrastructure across the country, the de-Ba’athification process then purged the civil service of its top layer of management, leaving 20,000-120,000 people without work. The administrative capacity of the state had been shattered by over a decade of sanctions, three wars in 20 years and three weeks of uncontrolled looting. De-Ba’athification removed what was left: its institutional memory and a large section of its skilled personnel.

Iraq today is a state in a situation of failure. (my emphasis)