One of the biggest problems for the incoming US President Barack Obama will be what to do about Iraq. The 2003 US-led invasion (in which Australia and the UK were its only two allies) has been a failure.

Until the recent collapse in the US economy, it seemed that the US failure in Iraq would be a deciding factor in the November election. All the aspiring Presidential candidates in the 2008 primaries hoped that Bush would have cleared up his own mess before he left office in January 2009 and that they would not need to deal with that mess if they ever got into the White House.

As to assessing the Iraq invasion, this is what we now know:

• Saddam Hussein has been executed for his crimes
• Iraq was not involved in the September 11 attacks
• Iraq was not working with al-Qaeda
• al-Qaeda has gained recruits and supporters as a result of the invasion
• Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction left by 2003; the world had succeeded in disarming Iraq without recognizing it
• Iraq was not attempting to buy uranium from Niger (as President Bush claimed in early 2003 as part of the justification for the attack)
• The invasion of Iraq may have been contrary to international law (particularly the UN Charter) and so Bush, Blair and Howard are potentially war criminals for crimes against the peace
• The Americans had not done enough to plan for the post-war activities
• Iraqis did not welcome the Allies as liberators over the long term
• It was wrong for the president on May 1 2003 to stand onboard the USS “Abraham Lincoln” with a banner behind him stating “Mission Accomplished”; the mission was only just beginning.
• Iraq’s recovery has not been sufficiently quick as to pay for itself out of oil revenues
• The US failed to estimate the extent of the rebuilding challenge, and its creation of the largest US embassy in the world in Baghdad means that we do not know how long the US will have to stay in Iraq
• Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was wrong to think that invading Iraq would end the “Vietnam syndrome”, that is, the reluctance to use force - instead he has got the US bogged down in another Vietnam-type quagmire.
• The war has now dragged on for longer than the US Civil War (1861-5), US involvement in World War I (1917-8) and World War II (1941-45), and the fighting in the Korean War (1950-3); only the Vietnam War went on longer
• The US was wrong to think that a strong stand in Iraq would make other “rogue states” cower before US might; its failure there has been to embolden countries like North Korea and Iran
• Invading Iraq has not made the US (or UK or Australia) any safer
• We do not know what the final financial cost of the invasion will be (taking into account the cost of lifetime disability and healthcare of military personnel, replacing military equipment, and the increased burden of military recruiting)
• The invasion and occupation have been paid for by the US government going into deeper debt and this debt will need to be repaid (and so there are also interest costs)
• and all this has contributed to the US’s current financial crisis