Iraq after Saddam

10. Reflecting back on more than six years of a disastrous occupation of Iraq we can now safely say that what has been achieved is diametrically opposed to the original hypothesis of the wars ideological promoters. The principle myth underlying the illegal 2003 invasion lies now in ruins. It has proved to be America's greatest foreign policy failure ever, effecting the whole of the ME and undermining prospects for political change for decades to come. What replaced Saddam is a corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state, far worse than before the invasion. The largest winners were the Islamist Shiite parties which are now dominating the scene and could well in coming years align themselves to Teheran. The present Iraqi "government" is guilty of the same - if not worse - human rights violations than what the previous regime - allegedly - had been accused of.