Further depressing details of the disaster also known as the presidency of George W. Bush were unveiled this week. US forces commander in Iraq General David Petraeus and US ambassador Ryan Crocker went before Congress and made it plain that the US is getting very little for its US$3 trillion war in Iraq except for continuing grief, on a daily basis, in homes across Iraq and America.
In reality, the immense expenditure and the continuing deaths are only the tip of the iceberg of the true damage, not merely to the US but also to this fragile planet.
This week saw the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad. The American military death toll is now about 4,000, or over 1,000 more than were killed on September 11, 2001. Iraqi deaths have been far higher - at least 150,000, according to the respected New England Journal of Medicine.
Deaths are only part of the sad toll. The occupiers have failed to create a society in which Iraqis can enjoy even basic daily necessities, let alone the democracy and freedom that Mr Bush promised when he launched his latter-day crusade against Hussein and his illusory weapons of mass destruction.
According to the testimony of the medal-bedecked General Petraeus, the troop surge has had some 'significant and uneven' successes. But he warned that 'countless sectarian fault lines still exist in Baghdad and elsewhere'. He resorted to cliches to underline the grim situation: 'We haven't turned any corners. We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel' and, then, later: 'The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. Progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible.'
The recent attempt by the Iraqi government to assert itself in Basra failed ignominiously, and various Shiite gangs proved that they really rule the roost. General Petraeus' admission about the increasing involvement of Iran should cause Washington to think more than twice: how did the US blunder into Iraq in the quest for weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and then lay the table for a key player in Mr Bush's 'axis of evil' to feast?