When it comes to the War on Iraq, President Bush repeatedly has indicated he’d wait for history’s judgment after his present critics have quieted down. Yet I consider that to be as predictable as it was that he’d fail in Iraq before he sent our troops in. When I read of the tragic open, festering wounds Iraqi families suffer from, all of the crimes of Bush’s commission and omission come back to me.

The war was said to be about fighting a supporter of terrorists who ‘certainly’ had old biological weapons he never accounted for, a tyrant who was on the verge of possessing a nuclear missile. But his recent ties to terrorists were weaker than the ties of Bush’s friends, the Saudis. The old weapons stocks were gone. Old Man Saddam was loath to admit that for fear that neighboring enemies would attack Iraq if they knew.

His nuke development had ended after the first President Bush attacked Iraq a dozen years earlier. The intermittent bombardments of military sites during the Clinton administration had continually weakened Iraq’s army. Other than the old weapons stocks, claims about everything else had been debunked by UN inspectors and military analysts before the March 2003 invasion. And weapons analysts - also before Bush attacked - pointed out those old stocks would be degraded and unusable. Yet the Cheney Doctrine prevailed: if there was a 1% chance that Saddam had developed WMDs, everything done against him became legit.

That 1% came via a questionable informant, Curveball, who was supplied by a previously discredited Ahmad Chalabi, who has again been discredited since. Chalabi has also profited financially from the war and is suspected of acting in behalf of the Iranian government. In street terms, Bush and Cheney had been triple-punked.

This has been the legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration. It’s a politically devastating defense but it’s spared them a war crimes trial so far. They didn’t fake the intel; they were merely incompetent. They rejected the accurate intelligence in favor of the highly suspicious intelligence, they had no action plan for the post-Saddam occupation and they made a series of bad choices they made that forever blew any possibility of ever winning that war. They beat Saddam on Day One and spent more than five years since defeating their own goals and damaging both Iraq and the United States.

The more acute examples of incompetence are now beyond dispute. Dismissing the entire public safety infrastructure permitted lawlessness to skyrocket. Contracting out the rebuilding of the country’s physical infrastructure to Americans and other foreigners left more than 2/3rds of Iraqis unemployed, always a prescription for disaster to leave so many idle hands around where guns were plentiful. Corruption reigned throughout the contracting process, with billions of dollars still unaccounted for. And the Shia-Sunni split that the first Bush administration had feared when they chose to leave Saddam in power was fully exploited by all participants: the Shia death squads of SCIRI tied to the new Iraq government, the Sunni resistance fighting for their survival against the Shia majority and the much smaller contingent of foreign mercenaries committed to do whatever they could to prolong and aggravate the conflict.

The first nine months of the war provided Bush enough positive developments to hold off its critics, from the fall of Hussein’s government to the killing of his sons to the capture of Saddam. He was able to parlay that into a successful re-election bid 11 months later. But to do so, he also had to keep the secrecy lid on as much as he could and aggressively discredit his most accurate insider critics (Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson, especially) and make his military veteran political opponents out to be indecisive wusses who might even be traitors. It was overlooked by the corporate media that the outcome was one of the worst showings of public support for a wartime President in US history.

Shortly thereafter, the secrecy wraps started coming undone. Abu Ghraib was the first and the worst, for that was the major turning point that forever sealed the war’s outcome. The parallel in Vietnam was the Tet offensive. US forces won against that, just as they’ve won every major battle in Vietnam and again, in Iraq. But in the eyes of the public in the war zone, there would never be assent to a US victory or a US sponsored puppetocracy. A generation will pass in 15 or 20 years before many of the wounds heal enough for more civil relations to resume.

That’s the verdict historians will render about Bush and Cheney. Incompetent, dishonest and quite likely criminal. Successful at political wins only through manipulation and secrecy. It’s unlikely that the men really give a damn what historians conclude in a decade or two. Their self-esteem has never arisen from public approval. It’s always come from the pleasure they get from wielding power and from enriching themselves, along with the relief they feel when they remain certain they’ve gotten away with both without losing their freedom or wealth in any legal court.

But what can historians make of the lessons for others, like the families in Haditha or the families of US troops or the larger public in Iraq and the US? Here’s a few:

1) Soldiers in a war zone, like a cop on duty, are always going to be exonerated unless they’re done in by enough of their peers. Victims, victims’ families and other eyewitnesses will always be portrayed as unreliable witnesses. The rare instances where peer testimony results in convictions will likely be overturned someday on appeal or will draw a pardon within 2 to 3 years.

2) In every war, atrocities will occur. Some people on both sides in every conflict will commit those atrocities. These two points are simply the facts of nearly every war, even when infants are murdered. And they remain the chief reasons why wars should always be a last resort. Pre-emptive wars as a tragedy preventative remain a myth because enormous tragedy will result anyway.

3) As the profit potential has risen for professional soldiers, contracted mercenaries, the military-industrial complex and even the political decision-makers, the inevitability of more wars is certain as is their occurence more frequently. Profit is the most compelling ideology for more wars and more expensive wars.

4) Those who resort to the greatest silence - invoking national security to protect secrets - will always be those with the most crimes and errors to hide. When such secrets eventually get exposed, that’s been proven repeatedly. And the Bush-Cheney administration has been, by far, the most secretive government in US history.

5) Atrocities will always create some victims who’ll remain vengeance-minded. Sometimes that means blowback will occur but sometimes it won’t. But either way, new lifelong enemies will be created. Some things - like the murders in Haditha - will never be forgiven. And some of the perps will experience real misery as a result of their actions, no matter what the courts decide. Others will at least be subjected to the doubts of others for the atrocities they took part in; noe will escape at least that.

6) All who have suffered and all who will suffer could only have avoided that if the leaders of either country were more principled, more honest, more compassionate and more just. Each of those leaders bears the full weight of every negative consequence. Though they may choose to remain in denial about their responsibility and their guilt, it’s only the rare exception that will gain honor conducting a war against an equally rare Hitler. For most, millions will mock their name, belittle their families and happily spit on their graves.

There’s your verdict, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, twenty years early. I don’t think you care. It will be enough that your descendants will refrain from following in your footsteps, which remains the ultimate rebuke of the horrors you stood for.