The defining flaw of the invasion was the British and American forces' failure to stabilise the Iraqi state immediately after the invasion.
I was in Baghdad a month after the American military, by which time the state had been taken to pieces by looters. Buildings had been taken apart, the fixtures, fittings and computers all long gone.
I was totally against the invasion for two reasons. Firstly, it marked a complete overturning of international law. Secondly, as I travelled between Washington, New York and the highest levels of British government before the invasion, I found no understanding whatsoever of the task they were just about to undertake.
Britain and America were short on troops from the start, short on planning and short on knowledge about the country. The whole thing was rushed and driven by a wishful thinking on America's part that realities on the ground were irrelevant because they had the power to overcome anything.
The Middle East was, before the invasion, the least democratised and had the least foreign investment of any area in the world.
George Bush looked at this area as a failure of globalisation and of post-Cold War American power, and saw Iraq as the key to opening up the Middle East. The war was about a lot more than oil – it was about making the Middle East a friendly and tradable state, in line with US interests and ideology.
But the complete collapse of state capacity and the US disbanding of the Iraqi army led to an acute security vacuum in Iraq. There are three different groups perpetrating violence: criminal gangs, murdering, kidnapping and robbing for money; the insurgency - about 80,000 to 100,000 fighters - fighting to drive the Americans out, who've fused their nationalist ideology with a militant Sunni Islamism; and 100,000 militias who legitimise themselves explicitly in terms of religious or sectarian divides. The poor people caught in the middle are the vast majority of the 26 million Iraqis.
With elections in 2005, Iraqis put their lives on the line to vote for hope, progress and stability. But the politicians they elected failed them, engaging in petty squabbling and in-fighting, rather than the state-building they were elected to do.
The Iraq Study Group report in December 2006 and George Bush's January 10th speech marked a decisive change in attitudes towards Iraq, and an acceptance of failure. Americans recognise they're going home without the job done.
And Tony Blair's recent statement that he's pulling troops out is solely to do with domestic concerns and has nothing to do with reality on the ground. They're being pulled out because things are getting worse, not better.
If there is a solution at all, it lies in building up the state. After areas have been cleared of insurgents, the government would need to reconstitute security, build up it's administrative capacity and establish the rule of law.
All that would have to be done using a multi-national coalition of the United States, the United Nations and European Union in a multi-lateral effort, under a United Nations mandate.
It's not a likely way forward, but it's the only possible way forward. Unless this is done, Iraqis will be left in a collapsed state in the midst of the most brutal civil war.
