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Chickens home to roost

"As if by stealth, almost without our noticing, the Iraq war's long-awaited turning point has arrived. After the innumerable events touted as decisive that turned out to be anything but that - the capture of Saddam Hussein, the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the various milestones related to the creation of a new Iraqi political order - the end game now becomes clear. And the outcome points ineluctably towards an American failure of immense proportions.

Historians of the global war on terror will likely recall September 2006 as a pivotal moment. Throughout this month, chickens have come home to roost. Each has arrived bearing bad news for the Bush administration."

So begins this op-ed piece in The Australian by Andrew Bacevich, a US Vietnam veteran and a contributing editor of The American Conservative. Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University and the author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford, 2005).

This is a sober assessment on where things are at, and not at, in relation to Iraq and the Bush presidency. It makes for interesting reading in the light of the recent report in the US on the increase of, and threat from, terrorism as a consequence of the Iraq War.

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