No Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq. So George Bush was either lying or was lied to when claiming that Iraq had thousands of litres of chemical weapons. So Tony Blair’s "Intelligence Dossier" was completely unintelligent, and his "45 minutes" assertion was an absurd fantasy. So John Howard eagerly played the role of sidekick Pancho to Bush’s Cisco Kid, and his gung-ho attitude and willingness to blindly accept the statements of the other two leaders thrust Australians into war.

So we have been duped. This should come as no surprise. According to the various opinion polls that circulated as our troops went off to Iraq, most Australians were against this war in the first place. The general public had enough common sense to realise that those claims were probably false and invented to justify the need for America to go to war to secure Iraq’s oil. Oil is thicker than blood, it seems, but it was a great relief to the families of the Australian forces – and no doubt to the greater relief of Mr Howard - that not one of them died in Iraq. American troops have won the war but cannot, however, win the peace and security that ordinary Iraqis crave.

The forceful installation of a "made in America" democracy will never be acceptable to the Iraqi peoples. Two US-appointed managers of ‘Iraq Inc.’ have already made speedy departures from the scene. The majority Shia populace appears to demand an Iranian-styled government but the US will not allow this to occur. The Kurds want independence but nobody is willing to let them enjoy it. America’s support for Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted swindler, as a potential Iraqi leader is an insult and a farce. The reappearance on the scene of members of the former royal family is another misguided attempt to pour oil on the troubled waters. The initial euphoria expressed by Iraqis six weeks ago for their liberation from the tyranny of Saddam Hussain has been replaced in part by a fear that a different, foreign and unwelcome despotism is being thrust upon them.

Does the war end here in Iraq? The American vision for world domination is obviously flawed. The US seeks to maintain and embellish its newly found status as the sole superpower but it needs to reflect more seriously on the global future and not continue to employ its current shortsighted, pragmatic approach that produces only short-term political and economic gains. This is not the way to establish and run a civilisation. The nations of "Old Europe" perhaps realise this better than does America. They were not willing to become members of the "Coalition" because they could see the negative consequences of a pre-emptive strike on Iraq.

The way forward lies in ameliorating policies and attitudes. If we don’t change the way we deal with and think about each other, we will simply perpetuate the current state of siege mentality. We all want peace, security and harmony. Setting up dictators, investing them with destructive weapons, turning a blind eye to their inhumane practices, then toppling them militarily via a campaign of deliberate misinformation and blatant lies – these are not the ways to achieve peaceful coexistence.

The world desperately needs Islam, but cannot see it because Muslims are very adept at concealing it. Weapons of mass destruction as well as those of mass deception need to be curtailed.