While the West frets over the increasingly bellicose utterances of North Korea's deranged delinquent dictator and wrings its hands in frustration over the on-going bloodbath in Syria, attention has strayed from Iraq as it spirals towards civil war.

In Iraq everyone privately knew the WMD thing was a pretext, and this assumption underpinned all our political work. No-one was 100% certain of the real aims. Still today. So we made it up.

The great achievement of post-Saddam Iraq is its transition from a centralised and mainly Sunni dominated one-party rule to federalism and power-sharing between Sunnis, Kurds and Shia, and small minorities. All this is, or should be, governed by the constitution, approved by over 80% of the people in a referendum in 2005.

The Kurdistan region is clearly thriving as the safest, most stable, and prosperous part of Iraq, with a headstart of 12 years of relative freedom from Saddam. The number of deaths through terrorism is about 200 since 2003. It has built a major energy sector from nothing in just a few years. And it has helped stabilise the rest of Iraq and could be a model for it to follow.

New freight and passenger lines between, say, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Dohuk and Ceyhan in Turkey would drive new markets and knit people together wherever the borders are. And Iraq would be the transport hub of the whole region.

The hero-soldier brand is undeniably potent. The increased presence of soldiers at sports events - be it at Premier League games or the Olympics - is a shrewd move by the PR-savvy Ministry of Defence. The idea of a wholesome, dutiful hero is very appealing and is very much a feature of British identity, intertwined as it is with our military history and our imperial present.

Ten years on from the invasion of Iraq, the controversial question still remains as to whether or not the war was worth it. On 7 February, to mark...

The bitter divisions over the Iraq war were reopened on Thursday evening, almost exactly a decade after the invasion. Panelists were asked ‘was i...

The death sentence passed two weeks ago by the Iraqi courts on the exiled Vice President of Iraq, Dr. Tariq al-Hashemi, is another milestone on that country's pathway to disaster and civil war.

Civil society is crucial to a vibrant democracy and the unions can bring people together whatever their religion or politics. Mr Maliki said all the right things and it was all reported and amplified in a packed press conference. But things haven't really changed.

Catherine Ashton will be within a few kilometers from Camp Liberty in just a few days time. Can she succeed where others have failed?