The memos were obtained by Michael Gordon, author, along with General Bernard Trainor, of Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, published to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion.

The British memos identified a series of US failures that contained the seeds of the present insurgency and anarchy.

The mistakes include:

· A lack of interest by the US commander, General Tommy Franks, in the post-invasion phase.

· The presence in the capital of the US Third Infantry Division, which took a heavyhanded approach to security.

· Squandering the initial sympathy of Iraqis.

· Bechtel, the main US civilian contractor, moving too slowly to reconnect basic services, such as electricity and water.

· Failure to deal with health hazards, such as 40% of Baghdad's sewage pouring into the Tigris and rubbish piling up in the streets.

· Sacking of many of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, even though many of them held relatively junior posts.

Mr Sawers, in a memo titled Iraq: What's Going Wrong, written on May 11, four days after he had arrived in Baghdad, is uncompromising about the US administration in Baghdad. He wrote: "No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis."

He said the US needed to take action in Baghdad urgently. "The clock is ticking." Both Mr Sawers, who is now political director at the Foreign Office, and Gen Whitley see as one of the biggest errors a decision by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and General Tommy Franks, the overall US commander, to cut troops after the invasion.

Mr Sawers advocated sending a British battalion, the 16th Air Assault Brigade, to Baghdad to help fill the gap. Although the US supported the plan, Downing Street rejected it weeks later.

The British diplomat is particularly scathing about the US Third Infantry Division, which he describes as "a big part of the problem" in Baghdad. He accused its troops of being reluctant to leave their heavily armoured vehicles to carry out policing and cites an incident in which British Paras saw them fire three tank rounds into a building in response to harmless rifle fire.

Mr Sawers, who had been British ambassador to Egypt before being sent to Iraq and is at present on a shortlist to be the next ambassador to Washington, sent the memo to Mr Blair's key advisers, including Jonathan Powell, the No 10 chief of staff, and Alastair Campbell, head of the Downing Street press operation at the time.

Mr Sawers, in later memos, welcomed the replacement of Gen Garner with Paul Bremer, a US diplomat. But in a memo written in June 25, Mr Sawyer concluded that, despite Mr Bremer's arrival, the situation was getting worse.

In that memo, Mr Sawers expressed opposition to further troop reductions. "Bremer's main concern is that we must keep in-country sufficient military capability to ensure a security blanket across the country. He has twice said to President Bush that he is concerned that the drawdown of US/UK troops had gone too far, and we cannot afford further reductions," Mr Sawers said.

Throughout his time in Iraq, however, Mr Sawers remained optimistic Mr Bremer would make a difference.

His views in the memo are echoed in a note by Gen Whitley, who says that while Gen Franks took credit for the fall of Baghdad, he showed little interest in the postwar period. "I am quite sure Franks did not want to take ownership of Phase IV," Gen Whitley wrote.

He added that Phase IV "did not work well" because the concentration was on the invasion. "There was a blind faith that Phase IV would work. There was a failure to anticipate the extent of the backlash or mood of Iraqi society."

The magazine said that US intelligence in 2002 misinterpreted internal Iraqi messages about weapons of mass destruction, thinking they were being hidden when in fact the messages were about complying with UN inspections.

One message about removing the term "nerve agents" from "wireless instructions" was cited by former US secretary of state Colin Powell in his February 5, 2003 statement to the UN Security Council as an example of Iraq's bad faith, said the magazine.

Another misread Iraqi message also from 2002 referred to instructions to "search the area surrounding the headquarters camp and (the unit) for any chemical agents, make sure the area is free of chemical containers, and write a report on it."

"US analysts viewed this information through the prism of a decade of prior deceit. They had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime's attempt to ensure it was in compliance with UN resolutions," said the article.

In late 2002, Saddam tilted toward trying to persuade the international community that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

"But after years of purposeful obfuscation, it was difficult to convince anyone that Iraq was not once again being economical with the truth," the study said.

Saddam was convinced that France and Russia would prevent an invasion of Iraq to protect their economic interests, the study said, citing former Prime Minister Tareq Aziz.

Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al-Sattar, the Iraqi army and armed forces chief of staff, claimed that Saddam believed that even if the United States did launch a ground invasion, Washington would rapidly bow to international pressure to halt the war, the study said.

When the invasion did come, Saddam clung to the belief that it would end short of regime change, as the 1991 Gulf War had, it said.

"No Iraqi leaders had believed coalition forces would ever reach Baghdad," Sattar was quoted as saying.

The USJFCOM documents that even as U.S.-led coalition forces massed on Iraq's borders in early 2003, Saddam remained convinced there would be no invasion -- and he believed that even if there were, he and his regime would survive.

"Saddam believed that the United States was a paper tiger and that France and Russia would protect him," Foreign Affairs wrote.

"Ignorant of military history, logistics, and technology, Saddam lived in a bubble due to the atmosphere of fear he had had instilled throughout his civil and military bureaucracies," the magazine said. Therefore, "once the war actually began, its ultimate result was a foregone conclusion."

The article confirms recent assessments that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction before he was toppled, but it says that he wanted others to suspect he might. "In the last months before the war he realized that it was too dangerous to continue playing this double game and finally decided to cooperate fully with international inspectors. But at that point his track record of repeatedly lying meant that no one believed him," Foreign Affairs said.

Even on the brink of the war that would topple him and shatter his power, Saddam's greatest concern remained "preventing a coup," Foreign Affairs said.

"This allowed him to stay in power, but it meant that his armed forces were almost completely ineffective at dealing with actual military operations against a competent foreign enemy," it said.

"Every senior commander interviewed after the start of hostilities emphasized the psychological costs of being forced to constantly look over his shoulder," the report wrote.

The report also rejected the widespread view in many Bush administration and neo-conservative circles in Washington that Saddam deliberately planned the current insurgency in Iraq.

"No. He thought the United States would never attack, and was confident that even if it did, the resulting war would follow essentially the same script as the first Gulf War in 1991, without a full-scale invasion all the way to Baghdad," Foreign Affairs wrote, describing the report.

"He did pre-position a lot of military materiel around the country before the war started, but only to disperse it and keep it safe, so that it would be available either in the later stages of a long and drawn-out campaign against the coalition, or to reestablish control at home afterwards (as he did in 1991, when the Kurds and Shia revolted).

"As far as can be determined from the interviews and records reviewed so far, there were no national plans to embark on a guerrilla war in the event of military defeat. Nor did the regime appear to cobble together such plans as its world crumbled around it," the report said.

"The regime ordered the (prewar) distribution of ammunition (around the country) in order to preserve it for a prolonged war with coalition forces," it said.

The report concludes that Saddam was so out of touch with events in the totalitarian bubble that he was convinced the war was still going brilliantly well when everything was collapsing all around him.

"How did Saddam think the war was going? Swimmingly. Because everyone knew that Saddam severely punished anybody who told him unpleasant truths, the entire regime was built on lies. During wartime, this meant that junior officers told senior officers that everything was going well, they reported it up the chain of command, and Saddam himself remained a prisoner of his delusions," Foreign Affairs said.

"As late as the end of March 2003, Saddam apparently still believed the war to be going the way he had expected. If Iraq was not actually winning it, neither was it losing -- or, at least, so it seemed to the dictator," the report said. "...The evidence now clearly shows that Saddam and those around him believed virtually every word issued by their own propaganda machine."

That was why, the report, said, on March 30, "Saddam's principal secretary directed the Iraqi foreign minister to tell the French and Russian governments that Baghdad would accept only an 'unconditional withdrawal' of U.S. forces because 'Iraq is now winning and ... the United States has sunk in the mud of defeat.' At that moment, U.S. tanks were a hundred miles south of Baghdad, refueling and rearming for the final push."

The report looks unlikely to trigger any sea-change in American popular perceptions of the war. But it may make it even more difficult for the White House and the Republican Party to counter the steady slide in the president's popular standing since the delayed and botched responses to Hurricane Katrina last summer.

You can see why political leaders might prefer to see the problems in Iraq as failures of execution. That shifts the blame from those who thought of the idea to those who had to carry it out. But if we are to learn by our mistakes it is important to understand what those mistakes were, and who made them.

We need to face squarely the mistakes of our leaders. We can all be glad that Saddam no longer rules Iraq. But we all know that none of the leaders who conceived and drove the invasion would have done so had they been able to foresee how things stand in Iraq today. Howard was more careful than the others, but he lent his weight - and Australia's - to their arguments.

These leaders misunderstood the costs and risks they were running in setting out to reshape Iraq. And that is what they were about. One thing the flood of instant history has made clear is that, while Howard, George Bush and Tony Blair undoubtedly believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that was not why the invasion went ahead.

It went ahead to destroy the Baath regime and replace it with something more congenial, something more aligned with our interests and, they stressed, our values.

The conception at the heart of this enterprise was that if a fully functioning liberal democratic Iraq did not spring spontaneously from the ashes of Saddam's dictatorship, it could be speedily and efficiently conjured by the application of US power. Especially military power; the whole project was, after all, a Pentagon initiative.

This misconception was powered by a misunderstanding of the nature and limits of armed force. Armies are very good at fighting other armies, but they are of very limited use for anything else. The contrary view is the beguiling illusion that military force can be used to achieve political goals and promote values, rather than secure purely military objectives.

It is an idea that not even the Vietnam War could quite kill off. The invasion of Iraq three years ago was a product of its resurgence. The situation in Iraq today is yet another demonstration of its fallacy. A force of 180,000 troops - and the expenditure of billions of dollars a month - gives the coalition very little influence over what happens in Iraq today, or over the shape of its future.

There is still a faint chance that Iraq's ill-matched factions will find a way to work together in some semblance of national government. But whether they do or not is out of our hands.

We had the power to destroy Saddam's regime, but not to build a new one. Only the Iraqis can do that. Only they can make the compromises, build the trust, contain their fears and curb their rage enough to generate the sense of shared interests necessary to make Iraq work as a democratic political entity. All we can do is watch.

From the coalition's point of view - and especially Washington's - to leave now would be a disastrous political and strategic defeat, with unpredictable consequences.

It might come to that anyway, but in the meantime our leaders just hang on and hope that even if we have failed, the Iraqis will somehow make something work. It's a forlorn hope, but better than certain humiliation.

And for Australia? We are there, above all, to support our ally. As an exercise in alliance management, that is probably justified.

But the fact that we find ourselves in this predicament, compelled to sustain a largely futile symbolic presence in a land in which we can achieve so little, is a testament to the failure of Howard's initial conception.

We need to remember this the next time someone tries to argue that we should send our new "hardened and networked army" to promote Australia's values far away.

Hugh White is a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.

President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that he really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to "civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Wilson lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to make the world safe for the rising American power.

President Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was "a military target."

And everyone lied about Vietnam -- President Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, President Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin and President Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia. They all claimed the war was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanted to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

President Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991 -- hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait, rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

There is an even bigger lie: the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

If our starting point for evaluating the world around us is the firm belief that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then we are not likely to question the president when he says we are sending our troops here or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values -- democracy, liberty, and let's not forget free enterprise -- to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the world.

But we must face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation.

We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which the U.S. government drove millions of Indians off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations.

We must face our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation and racism.

And we must face the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is not a history of which we can be proud.

Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted the belief in the minds of many people that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have embraced this notion.

But what is the idea of our moral superiority based on?

A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world.

It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join people around the world in the common cause of peace and justice.

I thought it would be a good idea to find someone who is qualified to discuss
how feasible it would be to train 99 Iraqi battalions in less than six months,
as Pace now claims has occurred.

I decided that someone who was in the US Army for 26 years and who worked
in eight conflict areas, starting in Vietnam and ending with Haiti, would be
qualified. If he had served in two parachute infantry units, three Ranger units,
two Special Forces Groups and in Delta Force that would be helpful as well.
And just to make sure, if he taught tactics at the Jungle Operations Training
Center in Panama and Military Science at the United States Military Academy
at West Point, thus knowing a thing or two about training soldiers, that would
be a bonus.

That person is Stan Goff.

"This is utter bullshit," was Goff's remark about the Pace claim
of having 100 Iraqi battalions when I asked him to comment, "He must be
counting the resistance among his forces."

Goff adds, "That dip-shit [Pace] is saying he has 60,000 trained and
disciplined people under arms ... 65,000 with all the staffs ... and almost
100,000 with the support units they would require. To train and oversee them
would require thousands of American advisors. It must suck for a career Marine
to be used so blatantly as a PR flak."

Goff mentioned that Pace "and everyone else" knows that the Iraqi
forces, "however many there are," are heavily cross-infiltrated.

"He [Pace] is saying that the Bush administration is going to empower
a pro-Iranian government with 100 ready battalions, when this administration
was handed this particular government as the booby prize in exchange for Sistani
pulling their cookies out of the fire during the joint rebellions in Najaf
and Fallujah," added Goff.

Further discrediting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Goff said, "To
train 99 [battalions] since last September is a claim only the average American
might swallow. The right question to ask is, where are they? Where are they
headquartered, and where are they in operation? Claiming operations security
doesn't count, unless they believe they can hide 100 units of 600 people each
in Iraq ... from other Iraqis ... who are often related to them."

He concludes, "These guys have become accustomed to saying any damn
thing, then counting on ignorance and apathy at home - along with hundreds
of Democrats who need spine transplants - to get away with it. You can quote
me on any of that."

There's a good reason why Pace and others are busy spewing smoke - it's to
hide the fact that there are no plans to leave Iraq.

While we're addressing propaganda, we mustn't leave out our brilliant military
strategist and warrior for protecting human rights, the illustrious Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice.

On March 8th, Rice delivered the opening remarks on the release of her Department's "2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices."

The introduction to the report says: "In Iraq, 2005 was a year of major
progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom. There was a steady growth
of NGOs and other civil society associations that promote human rights."

Uh, right.

This report is submitted to Congress by the State Department. I've often
wondered if our politicians are just this ignorant, or simply horrifically
misinformed like so many Americans. This report, perhaps, answers the latter.

My point is, if there is a concerted effort by high-ranking officials of
the Bush administration to portray things in Iraq as going well, then why are
there permanent bases being constructed in Iraq?

This media smokescreen from the likes of Pace, Rice and even "sharp-shooter" Cheney,
who recently said things in Iraq are "improving steadily," conveniently
leads the American people toward believing there will eventually be a withdrawal
of American soldiers.

But the problem with smokescreens is that pesky thing called "reality."

And in Iraq, the reality is that people like Pace, Rice, Cheney and their
ever-eloquent front man aren't telling the American public about their true
plans for Iraq.

One example that provides some insight into their agenda is the US "Embassy" which
is under construction in the infamous "Green Zone."

As you read this, a controversial Kuwait-based construction firm is building
a $592 million US embassy in
Baghdad. When the dust settles, this compound will be the largest and most
secure diplomatic compound in the world.

The headquarters, I mean "Embassy," will be a self-sustaining cluster
of 21 buildings reinforced 2.5 times the usual standards, with some walls to
be as thick as 15 feet.

Plans are for over 1,000 US "government officials" to staff and
reside there. Lucky for them, they will have access to the gym, swimming pool,
barber and beauty shops, food court and commissary. There will also be a large-scale
barracks for troops, a school, locker rooms, a warehouse, a vehicle maintenance
garage, and six apartment buildings with a total of 619 one-bedroom units.
And luckily for the "government officials," their water, electricity
and sewage treatment plants will all be independent from Baghdad's city utilities.
The total site will be two-thirds the area of the National Mall in Washington,
DC."

I wonder if any liberated Iraqis will have access to their swimming pool?

And unlike the Iraqi infrastructure, which is in total shambles and functioning
below pre-invasion levels in nearly every area, the US "Embassy" is
being constructed right on time. The US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee recently
called this an "impressive" feat, considering the construction is
taking place in one of the most violent and volatile spots on the planet.

Then there are the permanent military bases.

To give you an idea of what these look like in Iraq, let's start with Camp
Anaconda, near Balad. Occupying 15 square miles of Iraq, the base boasts two
swimming pools (not the plastic inflatable type), a gym, mini-golf course and
first-run movie theater.

The 20,000 soldiers who live at the Balad
Air Base, less than 1,000 of whom ever leave the base, can inspect new
iPod accessories in one of the two base exchanges, which have piles of the
latest electronics and racks of CDs to choose from. One of the PX managers
recently boasted that every day he was selling 15 televisions to soldiers.

At Camp Anaconda, located in al-Anbar province where resistance is fierce,
the occupation forces live in air-conditioned units where plans are being drawn
up to run internet, cable television and overseas telephone access to them.

The thousands of civilian contractors live at the base in a section called "KBR-land," and
there is a hospital where doctors carry out 400 surgeries every month on wounded
troops.

Air Force officials on the base claim the runway there is one of the busiest
in the world, where unmanned Predator drones take off carrying their Hellfire
missiles, along with F-16's, C-130's, helicopters, and countless others, as
the bases houses over 250 aircraft.

If troops aren't up for the rather lavish dinners served by "Third Country
Nationals" from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who work for slave
wages, they can visit the Burger King, Pizza Hut, Popeye's or Subway, then
wash it down with a mocha from the Starbucks.

There are several other gigantic bases in Iraq besides camp Anaconda, such
as Camp Victory near Baghdad Airport, which - according to a reporter for Mother
Jones magazine - when complete will be twice the size of Camp Bondsteel in
Kosovo. The Kosovo base is currently one of the largest overseas bases built
since the war in Vietnam.

Camp Liberty is adjacent to Camp Victory - where soldiers even compete in
their own triathlons. "The course, longer than 140 total miles, spanned
several bases in the greater Camp Victory area in west Baghdad," says
a news
article on a DOD web site.

Mr. Bush refuses
to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq because he doesn't intend
to withdraw. He doesn't intend to because he's following a larger plan for
the US in the Middle East.

Less than two weeks after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, US
military officials announced the intention to maintain at least four
large bases in Iraq that could be used in the future.

These are located near Baghdad International Airport (where the triathlon
was), Tallil (near Nasiriyah, in the south), one in the Kurdish north at either
Irbil or Qayyarah (they are only 50 kilometers apart) and one in western al-Anbar
province at Al-Asad. Of course, let's not forget the aforementioned Camp Anaconda
in Balad.

More recently, on May 22 of last year, US
military commanders announced that they would consolidate troops into
four large air bases. It was announced at this time that while buildings
were being made of concrete instead of the usual metal trailers and tin-sheathed
buildings, military officers working on the plan "said the consolidation
plan was not meant to establish a permanent US military presence in Iraq."

Right.

The US has at least four of these massive bases in Iraq. Billions of dollars
have been spent in their construction, and they are in about the same locations
where they were mentioned they would be by military planners back before Mr.
Bush declared that major
combat operations were over in Iraq.

It appears as though "mission
accomplished" in Iraq was not necessarily referring to guarding
the Ministry of Oil and occupying the country indefinitely (or finding WMDs,
disrupting al-Qaeda, or liberating Iraqis, blah-blah-blah), but to having
a military beach-head in the heart of the Middle East.

Note that while US officials don't dare say the word "permanent" when
referring to military bases in Iraq, they will say "permanent access." An
article entitled "Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases
in Iraq," which was a front-page story in the New York Times on April
19, 2003, reads: "There will probably never be an announcement of permanent
stationing of troops. Not permanent basing, but permanent access is all that
is required, officials say."

Why all of this? Why these obviously permanent bases? Why the beach-head?

A quick glance at US government military strategy documents is even more
revealing.

"Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries
from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the
power of the United States," reads the 2002
National Security Strategy.

To accomplish this, the US will "require bases and stations within and
beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia."

Another interesting document is "Joint Vision 2020" from the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose "vision" is "Dedicated individuals
and innovative organizations transforming the joint force of the 21st Century
to achieve full spectrum dominance [bold type theirs]: persuasive in peace,
decisive in war, preeminent in any form of conflict [italics theirs]."

US policymakers have replaced the Cold War with the Long War for Global Empire
and Unchallenged Military Hegemony. This is the lens through which we must
view Iraq to better understand why there are permanent US bases there.

In the Quadrennial Defense Review Report released on February 6, 2006, there
is a stated ambition to fight "multiple, overlapping wars" and to "ensure
that all major and emerging powers are integrated as constructive actors and
stakeholders into the international system." The report goes on to say
that the US will "also seek to ensure that no foreign power can dictate
terms of regional or global security. It will attempt to dissuade any military
competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable
regional hegemony or hostile action against the United States or other friendly
countries, and it will seek to deter aggression or coercion. Should deterrence
fail, the United States would deny a hostile power its strategic and operational
objectives."

In sum, what is the purpose of permanent US military garrisons in Iraq and
the implicit goals of these government documents?