Remember the three capitalized letters, WMD? They used to stand for the words Weapons of Mass Destruction. Nobody uses the term anymore, but those three letters were all over the news when the George Bush presidency was trying to capitalize on the fear of Americans still reeling from the September 11 attacks.

That fear gave the Bush regime a moral mandate to launch the second American war against Iraq in 2003, thus cementing modern disaster in Mesopotamia and setting the stage for a historic comeuppance against Republican ideals in America.

Even as early as 2005, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the man tasked with characterizing the WMD threat for the world, was already admitting publicly that this period of his career stood as a blot on his record. Mr Powell's then admission marked a stunning retreat from the Bush regime's assertion that Iraq not only possessed weapons of mass destruction, but maintained a state of readiness to use them within a 45 minute timeframe. 

As it turned out, the invading American led forces found no WMD program in Iraq. In the recriminations that followed, it became clear that the evidence touted as the reason for invading Iraq had been entirely fabricated by elements of the US administration, up to and including the then Commander in Chief, George W Bush.

And so, some would say by the will of Allah, victory for freedom Iraq became the mother of all American military quagmires as thousands of well motivated insurgents made it their duty to send all the Americans home, one body bag at a time.

By September of 2008, the voting public in the United States had also decided that the reign of error in American politics had to come to an end. They pinned their hopes on the most unlikely seeming candate possible, a black man with a Muslim sounding name. The WMD debacle became the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.
 
 Barak Hussein Obama's election can therefore be read as a repudiation of decades of mean spirited public policy in the United States. These policies have consistently punished the weak and increased suffering in the United States and abroad. The recent epoch in American life has seen the country reviled as a rogue nation, it's leadership openly ridiculed by even friendly governments, its people singled out for terroristic attack at every turn.

In this atmosphere, a black man has become America's golden child.

But this alone will not be enough to lead the United States out of its dark ages. There's already plenty of well publicized evidence to suggest that any informed observer should have been able to comfortably predict that Saddam Hussein's regime did not possess the means to attack far away countries with WMDs.

And the President of the United States is nothing if not an informed observer.

And so if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, then the people of Iraq are being made to suffer for some other reason. What could this other reason be?

The task of finding the answer to this question may well fall under many jurisdictions both within the United States and without. These include the FBI, US Congressional review, and the World Court.

The point of any legal post mortem of the Bush legacy would be to assure the world that America recognizes its uniqe place in the world. It  has become a nation so powerful that it cannot be sanctioned by other nations. And therefore its people and leaders must maintain strong institutions for policing themselves on the world stage.

Barak Obama's presidency must not squander the opportunity to reaffirm the values of the American Constitution. The leaders of all nations must be held accountable for the actions they initiate. America can be no different. And where those actions abridge freedom and cause egregious harm, then special care must be taken to ensure that the guilty are found out and punished.

It's the American way.