US President Donald Trump may be a corrupt individual, who lacks any form of empathy for his fellow man. He may also be total narcissist who is unable to tell the truth. He has pulled out of the Paris Climate Change Accords, he has withdrawn from the Iran Nuclear Deal and he has opened the American Embassy in Jerusalem. This man is totally unsuited to the job that he holds. As each day passes, his incompetence is exposed.

Despite his sheer awfulness, he has not taken the United States to war like George W Bush in 2003. We need to remind ourselves of the scale of the deceit and propaganda used to manipulate the public into supporting an unnecessary war in the Middle East. It is very easy in 2019 to forget the lead up to war.

Post 9/11, Bush told the world that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the peace as he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Pre-emptive attacks were required to avoid the possibility of “a mushroom cloud”. Iraq was targeted. The Bush Team tried to tie Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda, effectively saying that he was involved in the attack on the Twin Towers. The propaganda machine began to feed the media to manage public opinion.

The United Nations sent inspections to find evidence of Saddam’s weapons, but their timetable did not match up with those of the Pentagon. An invasion was scheduled regardless of what the United Nations said. Colin Powell went before the United Nations and told the world Iraq possessed dangerous weapons. The evidence was rock solid. Only military action could remove this threat.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite claims that the intelligence was a “slam dunk” by the CIA Director George Tenet. The Bush Team all advocated war with Saddam Hussein, a former ally of the United States, who once welcomed Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad in the 1980s.

The war was also illegal as it did not have the support of the United Nations. There was no Second Resolution to support military action. How many American soldiers died as a result of this foolish war? How many Iraqi civilians were killed during the invasion and occupation? Can Americans imagine the United States being invaded by a foreign power who claimed that it threatened the peace?

The emergence of ISIS with all their barbarity is a direct consequence of the Bush Administration’s folly. The Caliphate at its peak in 2014, seemed like a functioning state. At no point have Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rice looked back with sorry or regret. They are so far removed from the havoc that they have created.

Donald Trump may be a vile character, yet he has yet to achieve the destruction that the Bush Administration inflicted on Iraq.