I spent a lot of time thinking that the US and UK governments really did believe that there were WMD and were so convinced that they were unwilling to listen to any contrary evidence, no matter how strong it was.

And now, well, I have to conclude that they were indeed mindbogglingly, wilfully blinding themselves to the real state of things, or were mindboggling, fraudulently dishonest about it. I’m not sure which one is worse.

Yes I am a fruitcake who forgot to take his meds.

However, I suspect that their actual intent is to achieve political stability by stirring up sectarian conflict. I know that doesn’t appear to make any sense, but it’s a pattern you see in almost all US military intervetions since Vietnam. Split the country into factions, and then try and make sure one of the factions you’re backing wins. The fact that it never works doesn’t seem to penetrate.

At this stage, I’m not sure that they can even conceive of acheiving a foreign policy goal by any means other than violence.

Americans are famously sensitive to high fuel prices. High prices are a big vote loser. And pushing up oil prices is a risky business for the economy as a whole. As in my comment above, what the Republicans want more than anything is to stay in power. I just don’t see them taking these risks deliberately.

Before the war, I remember reading some neo-con economist predict that oil would be at $20 per barrel six months after the invasion. He as much as said “and cheap oil is big vote winner and we clever war supporters will get the credit for that come election time”.

The Bush regime misunderstands a lot of things but they do understand the American psyche and when it comes to war, the very last thing the American public wants is to become involved in anything which looks like it might be another Vietnam. The scars from this conflict remain very deep; the fear of being trapped in another quagmire is still a powerful one.

By all accounts, it was the feeling that Iraq had become another unwinnable quagmire which caused the Republicans to lose control of both Houses. For these people, power is everything; their whole raison d’etre is to remain in power. As such, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that they would seek to deliberately create the conditions which would provoke the “Iraq is the new Vietnam” sentiment. Not only has this sentiment lost them votes, it has also severely restricted the ability of the President to conduct further military actions. In fact, it is fuelling demands for an isolationist approach to foreign policy, something Bush and co. do not want to happen.

On the international front too, it is very difficult to believe that the Bush government would intentionally create the conditions we now see in Iraq. The message is that the United States, for all its military might, is weak and unable to “complete the mission”. That is not a message any state wants to send but especially not the world’s only hyper-power.

And militarily, briefly, the U.S. is short of manpower. Right now, they want to be threatening Iran (perhaps not taking action but definitely threatening it). They are unable to do so because they’re tied up in Iraq.

This doesn’t directly address the question as to whether they want to break Iraq up into mini-states. I believe it does, however, make it extremely unlikely that they are provoking the instability in order to try to bring it about. The costs of following such a policy are simply too great.