Little of what was promised in June 2004 has in fact been achieved. The security situation is a disaster, and this is seriously hampering the economic reconstruction of the wrecked country.
The country's first free elections in recent memory have taken place, but most Iraqis are more interested in their personal safety and a reliable electricity supply. The news on both fronts is bad.
This contrasts with the pledges of a year ago. "We believe that we are in a position to control the security situation," interim prime minister Iyad Allawi said at the time. He is currently head of the largest opposition grouping in the Iraqi parliament and aiming to take power at the next elections.
Neither the Allawi government, nor the subsequent government elected in January have been able to control the suicide bombers or the local insurgent groups.
On the contrary, since the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari, which is dominated by Shiites and Kurds, took power, the violence has only increased.
According to U.S. reports, the number of attacks on foreign troops has also increased. No one has an answer to the violence plaguing the country.
"I will leave Iraq with confidence," said Washington's civil administrator, Paul Bremer, shortly before boarding the flight that would take him home from Baghdad.
Iraqis remember Bremer primarily for his decision to dissolve the Iraqi military. Many warned of the dangerous security vacuum that could result, but Bremer was adamant, as were his masters in the U.S. administration in Washington.
Now even U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a chief architect of the original Iraq campaign and renowned for his caustic comments, is adopting a more modest tone.
His regularly expressed conviction that "victory" was around the corner have given way to the calm appraisal that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for years.
This weekend came the news that after numerous offensives by crack U.S. troops in the country's Sunni heartland around Baghdad failed to ring in that victory, Rumsfeld has allowed members of his staff to make contact with Iraqi extremists.
It is a matter of controversy how sovereign Iraq actually is, a year after the formal handover of power. Some commentators have remarked that the Baghdad government is in much the same position as its most prominent captive, Saddam Hussein.
The transfer of power a year ago meant that the former dictator was formally in the hands of the Iraqi leadership, but in practice he remains under U.S. detention.
Washington once saw the military operation in Iraq as part of "the war on Islamic terrorism", but it is increasingly clear that Iraq has become a magnet and prime field of operations for the "jihadists".
"Seen within the global context, the invasion was counter-productive, as the extremists now have the opportunity in the lawless environment of Iraq to regroup and to gather battle experience that they will be able to use elsewhere once the Americans have left," a European terrorism expert has said.
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