Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, we have been hit with a multiplicity of bromides, myths, falsehoods, and deceptions by U.S. officials and the mainstream media. "Saddam was coming to get us with his WMDs." "Mushroom clouds were going to start appearing over U.S. cities." "The troops in Iraq are defending our freedoms." The troops are bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq." "Occupation Iraqi Freedom is going to produce a paradise of freedom and prosperity."

And then every once in a while a small dose of reality about Iraq creeps into the mainstream media, which is what happened in the July 15, 2017, issue of the New York Times.

The Times' article pointed out what we here at FFF have been saying about Iraq for the past 15 years: that the winner of the U.S-Iraq War in 2003 was … Iran! Yes, Iran, the country that the U.S. government ranks among the top of its official-enemies list.

The title of the article says it all: "Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. "Handed the Country Over."

Of course, that title implies that if the U.S. government had not exited Iraq in 2011, Iran would not be "dominating in Iraq." That's ridiculous. Iran has been dominating in Iraq ever since the U.S. ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003.

The Times essentially acknowledges that central point:

When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure — about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent — were poured into the cause.

From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a

In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.

This is what most Americans have avoided confronting ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Ever since then, Americans from all walks of life have blindly thanked the troops for their "service" in Iraq, without giving any thought to exactly what such "service" consisted of.

The automatic assumption has been that the "service" consisted of defending our rights and freedoms here at home. But there is one big problem with that assumption: It's been manifestly false from the get-go. Iraq never attacked the United States or threatened the freedom of the American people.

Such being the case, what exactly is the "service" for which Americans have been thanking the troops in Iraq for the past 15 years? The service consists of installing an official Islamic Shiite regime in Iraq, one that is loyal to and aligned with Iran, as the Times article observes.

That's the reality that Americans have simply not wanted to confront for the past 15 years. Many still do not want to confront it. The Times article helps them to do so.

The troops in Iraq were never fighting to defend our rights and freedoms. They were fighting for a regime change, one that ousted Saddam Hussein's Islamic regime, which was Sunni, and replace it with another Islamic regime, which was Shiite.