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No one seriously argues there is loads to criticize about the conduct of the campaign in Iraq. But the BBC goes kilometers miles beyond such in one of the most remarkable BBC single “news” pieces one is likely ever to come across on the subject. There’s no point trying to break it down, just suffice it to say that nearly every paragraph is chock full of the mischaracterization, half-truths and selective innuendo quality reportage we’ve come to rely on for blogging content enjoy, starting with the very headline itself:

Bush speech hails Iraq ‘victory’

Even if one utterly disagrees with the basis for the conflict, the battle once joined makes arguing about whether it should have been fought one argument that will never be resolved. What we do know is that Saddam Hussein’s regime was swept away within weeks in the spring of 2003; Saddam Hussein himself is now in his grave, and his two most likely “successors” are also dead. Despite its travails in trying to sort itself out following decades of some of the most horrendous misrule ever catalogued nearly anywhere, Iraq is no longer a Stalinist-like terror state playing “cat and mouse” with international “inspectors”. Most vitally, it has a reasonably representative government and a population that appears to support that government genuinely, or doesn’t — but neither out of fear.

Yet the BBC is unsure it was a “victory”.

Separately, the BBC’s John Simpson unsurprisingly supplies us with these observations:

…It has lasted almost as long as World War II and cost almost as much…

First, does Mr Simpson know precisely how long WWII actually went on? Did it really start on September 3, 1939 and end cleanly on May 7, or May 9, or September 2, 1945? Or are those (and others) just convenient dates based on signatures affixed to pieces of paper? For millions, the conflict had opened (and for untold numbers ended, with their deaths) in the early-middle 1930s; and the Western Allies only got heavily involved years into it, and the U.S. even later than most. And for millions of others, WWII didn’t really end until 1989-1991.

Secondly, and incidentally, Mr Simpson likely recalls also that Britain’s participation in WWII actually bankrupted — and not in the descriptive sense, but in the financial — the country. It wasn’t until well into the 1950s that Britain began to recover economically. In contrast, the U.S. came out of WWII far stronger than it went into it.

Totalling up a true balance sheet cost of WWII had it not been fought is, even for just Britons and Americans, close to impossible. But if Mr Simpson can authoritatively inform us now how much WWII actually cost not only would he be pretty unique, but we’d all love to see his figure and particularly from whom he’d gotten it. So flippantly, and yet emphatically, to compare one phantom figure to another phantom figure — the true cost of the war in Iraq — is journalistically ludicrous.

…More importantly, the war has shown the limits of American power. It is clear the United States can only manage to fight two small wars at a time.

It might also be said that what has been demonstrated is how the U.S. can fight “two small wars” without the overwhelming mass of its population having much personally to endure that daily fact. For if they don’t watch BBC World, or pay a great deal of attention to news generally, people go about their daily business largely unaffected; there are not too many other countries powerful enough to fight “two small wars” and require almost no sacrifices from its population. Indeed, one can only but wonder what the U.S. could do today militarily if it mobilized most of its population — just as it had done during, say, Mr Simpson’s WWII example.

Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the US armed forces almost to breaking point. America after the invasion of Iraq is no longer the superpower it was before…

Yes, obviously there’s always that presumably welcome Chinese communist hegemony out there on the horizon, to give one global hope. But despite the U.S. “stretch”, new enemies don’t seem to be lining up just yet, eagerly awaiting their chance to take their best shot.

…Germany’s 19th-Century Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, said that great powers had to be very careful when they put their military strength to the test. Unless they are overwhelmingly successful, he meant, the perception will be that they have been defeated…

That’s astounding. According to Mr Simpson, the U.S. evidently should have pursued its tactics in Iraq according to precepts laid down by a 19th century Prussian martinet, whose goals for German unification and hegemony in central Europe helped eventually to bring on WWI, and then WWII. But perhaps Mr Simpson actually truly does believe it would have been better morally if the U.S. had chosen to have fought these “two small wars” as it actually had had to fight WWII? However, one can only also just imagine what Mr Simpson would be deftly observing now if the U.S. had opted to have firebombed every major Iraqi city, in order to avoid any “perception” that it had “been defeated“.

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UPDATE, March 27: Oh, yes, this state was no threat whatsoever.