Paran Balakrishnan: Oh, what a glorious mess

MY WORD!

What more can President George Bush do to lose the coming presidential elections? He stood on the White House lawns on Thursday morning and solemnly declared that the photographs from Baghdad's al Ghraib prison had, "sickened" him. It was an unwilling confession that had to be extracted almost like a rotting tooth.

Meanwhile, on computer screens around the world traders pushed the price of oil to its highest level in 13 years. For three consecutive days oil prices scaled new peaks and inched towards the dreaded $40 mark.

For Americans who've been belting down the highway in SUVs, MUVs, UVs and other gas-slurping road monsters, it's almost as if the end is nigh. It might even be time to check out namby-pamby dual-fuel vehicles like the Toyota Prius.

Almost simultaneously, American helicopter gunships were zeroing in on targets in Najaf and tanks were racing down the streets.

The Americans proudly declared a victory though it wasn't clear how much of the city they had won back from the Shia militias. Consider that the US administration had counted on the Shias to be part of the welcoming crowds that would be waving the Stars and Stripes as the Yankees came riding into town.

It doesn't need a commodities trader to figure out that chaos in Iraq adds up to higher prices for every barrel of oil that's pumped out of the ground. And it shouldn't need much wisdom to figure out that higher oil prices could turn public opinion against the Iraq war and have a more profound effect than any number of unpleasant pictures from al Ghraib prison.

Even Bush's apology about the mistreatment of Iraqis came after extraordinary procrastination. On Wednesday Bush, in a damage control exercise, gave interviews to two Arab television stations but stopped short of apologising. About 24 hours later Bush appeared with King Abdullah of Jordan (and spoke about bringing democracy to the Arab world) and made a fuller, no-holds-barred apology.

Why did Bush suddenly decide that a fuller apology was needed to preserve his image around the world? Mainly, because of the unanimous condemnation that his interview attracted in the Arab world.

"The savagery of the US military is only a symptom of a wider abject policy failure for which the president ought actually to have been apologizing last night," wrote one daily. Every newspaper in the Arab world came to similar conclusions.

Bush's supporters have also acted in an extraordinary fashion in recent weeks. One company withdrew its advertising support for ABC because anchorman Ted Koppel devoted an entire programme to showing pictures and names of the roughly 720 American servicemen who have been killed in action during the war and its bloodier aftermath. Another publication came under blistering fire from right-wingers because it decided to publish pictures of servicemen coming home in coffins.

Democratic politicians were quick to point out that it was absurd to pull advertising from a programme honouring the war dead. And how can anyone explain the behaviour of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man who took the credit for the military campaign in Iraq?

Rumsfeld won a gold medal in the foot-in-mouth category by admitting privately that he hadn't been able to wade through the thick report on ill-treatment in Iraqi prisons.

His deputy Paul Wolfowitz created a stir before a Congressional committee because he didn't know how many servicemen had been killed in Iraq. Now the only question remaining is whether the pugnacious Rumsfeld will finally be forced to fall on his sword to atone for the deadly mistakes of the last few months.

The worst part of the entire Iraq quagmire is that even if the Americans march out of town it might not help. What would happen now if the Shias began battling with Sunnis for power?

Would the Kurds declare independence and would Iran intervene to tilt the balance in favour of its Shia brothers? What would the Saudis do if a Shia state came into being on its border? We've already seen what happened in Yugoslavia when Marshal Tito died. That might be a picnic compared to what could happen in Iraq.