Did you ever get the sinking feeling that we have all recently been the victims of a gigantic hoax? With all the television coverage, all the “embedded” journalists, did you ever see on TV or elsewhere the U.S. armed forces engage a significant sized Iraqi army unit, the famed Republican Guard, for example, in the so-called war? Did you ever see evidence of a major or minor military battle in Iraq during the “war”; tanks arrayed against tanks, armored columns of Iraqi army troops fighting against the U.S. Marines or Third Army? This is not to imply that there was no fighting, military operations or there were no casualties or deaths, especially of Iraqi civilians. But nobody bothered to count them since they were considered unfortunate (irrelevant) “contingent casualties” by the U.S. media and the Pentagon.

Iraq had a large army of 250,000 troops. Did you ever see evidence of even one division (approximately 12,000) regular Iraqi army troops resisting the invasion? Did you ever see any evidence of Iraqi fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, etc., engaged in combat, destroyed by U.S. forces in pitched military battles? Neither the U.S. corporate media, the European media nor the Arab media provided us with any evidence of a real military war in Iraq.

Did you notice that the Iraqi army did not surrender, nor did the Iraqi government? Where are the Iraqi army prisoners? At last count, the U.S. took only about 6,850 prisoners in the conflict. Where were, and where are, their formidable “weapons of mass destruction,” let alone such military hardware as planes, tanks, helicopters, armored personnel vehicles, artillery, rockets? Unless we are all blind or stupid, we can only conclude that there actually was no true military war in Iraq. War has historically been understood, defined as, “open armed conflict between the armed forces of two countries or states.” In recent times, the term war has been used very loosely and inappropriately to the confusion of all. For example, we have the “war on poverty,” the “war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism.” Using the traditional definition above, there was no military war in Iraq, no surrender of the Iraqi army or government, no military victory and therefore no heroes.

What actually occurred in Iraq was a Pentagon/media “virtual war,” a U.S. invasion of Iraq for bogus reasons that was largely unopposed by the Iraqi army, an army that did not put up much resistance but did not surrender either. At best, the Iraqi armed forces resisted the invasion only sporadically, retreated to the cities, and then dispersed and melted into the populations. The major resistance to the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion was waged predominately by irregulars, such as Baath party loyalists and others, in a desperate attempt to inflict casualties upon the invaders, with no hope of stopping the U.S. invasion. A Col. Muhammad had this to say about the conflict: “If we had fought, the war would still be going on. The British and the Americans would not be in our palaces. They would not be in our streets. We let them in.” (New York Times, May 25)

This raises the question, why didn’t the Iraqi Army fight? Now, months after the U.S. invasion, the truth is finally emerging. It appears that hundreds of officers of the Iraqi Army sold out to the Pentagon’s secret “Task Force 20” and the CIA. Among those high-ranking officers was none other than Iraqi’s defense minister, Gen. Sultan Hashem Ahmed ai-Tai (NYT, Aug. 10): “Iraqi military officers confirmed that after Americans and Iraqis made contact with them, they carried out acts of sabotage and helped disband their units as the war began.”

One can only conclude from all this that there was no U.S. military war in Iraq, therefore no U.S. military victory and no U.S. heroes. Today, there are about 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, only 5,000 less than during the invasion itself. On the other side is a demobilized Iraqi army and hostile population, fully armed and opposed to the U.S./British occupation. I might add, that there will also be no democracy, reconstruction, prosperity or peace in Iraq as long as the U.S. occupation continues.

Many Iraqi veterans and all of these soldiers are now veterans since Mr. Bremer III disbanded the Iraqi army by decree last month – feel betrayed by the U.S. They refused to fight the formidable U.S./British armed forces in exchange for back pay, jobs and pensions promised by the U.S. in the millions of leaflets dropped in the conflict. Mr. Bremer, after initially refusing to honor these promises, has recently agreed to pay these veterans their salaries (between $50 and $150 monthly) indefinitely and to incorporate them into newly organized army and police units. The U.S., by this act, bought off the Iraqi army, which it did not defeat, and made them our mercenaries. Indeed, that may not be the case at all since “the remnants of his (Saddam’s} army seem to have reconstituted themselves and staged deadly and increasingly sophisticated attacks on American Forces” (NYT, Aug. 5). At last count, there have been 66 American troops killed since May 1, when President Bush declared that hostilities in Iraq had ended. There were only 138 U.S. dead in the so-called war. The British suffered 42 dead during the invasion and eight more since May 1. If this trend continues or worsens, the occupation will be far more costly than the invasion. As for the monetary cost, it has recently been estimated that the Iraqi adventure is costing the U.S. approximately $4 billion a month, or nearly $50 billion a year – not counting interest charges on this deficit spending.

By the way, the scenario in Afghanistan is markedly similar. The only freedom that these two unfortunate nations will be preoccupied with in the near future will not be “free enterprise, free speech or free trade” – but freedom from the foreign (U.S./British) occupiers of their countries. I suspect that the Iraqi army veterans, regardless of who pays their salaries, will play a major role in this liberation from foreign occupation. I also suspect that no one will be happier to see this true liberation than the unfortunate U.S. troops who are illegally and immorally occupying these Arab countries and who are also victims of the same hoaxes. Sgt. Rohan A. Green said, “Everyone wants to go home. They want to go home alive.” Three months later, Staff Sgt. Ray B. Robinson is quoted as saying, “They’re killing us. Enough is enough.”

There was no war in Iraq, but there is an illegal and immoral occupation/colonization of the country. When asked how long this occupation/colonization of Iraq will last, the administration’s answer is “We will stay as long as it takes and not a day longer. … Bring them on.” We should all now support our troops by demanding that they be brought home – alive, now.

Melvin Burke, a professor of economics at the University of Maine, is a member of Veterans for Peace.