The dust has settled, although the Americans are still killing Iraqies - 13 today - and life goes on much as it did before. For us anyway. For the Iraqis, well, politics, Middle Eastern style has broken out. The clerics want the power and they want to say bye bye to the coalition.

Many people over here and America can't understand this. Ungrateful swines, they say. Here we are, liberating them and how do they repay us? By trashing their own cities and moaning about us.

Well, duh. For a start, what did we expect to happen when the police suddenly disappear off the streets and the new guys with guns just sit around watching? What would have happened in New York? London? Delhi? Moscow? Do the maths. Any city of six million with an average number of criminally minded, anti social arseholes. The average number - let's be conservative and say half a percent. I make that 30,000 people on the rampage. I'd say Baghdad got off lightly.

So, why aren't they grateful to us for liberating them?

Double duh. Let's look at it from an Iraqi perspective. Thirty years ago, a few thugs from Tikrit take over the country, becoming ever more repressive, ever more evil. The world looks on. The world does business with them. The Western World, Britain, France, America sell them arms. Meanwhile ordinary Iraqis suffer. The thugs declare war on their neighbours, use chemical weapons. The West looks on. Still does business. Still sells arms. The thugs become ever more brutal, ever more repressive. Gas the Kurds. The West looks on. Does business blah blah blah.

Enboldened, the thugs invade another neighbour. One step too far. The world wakes up. Led by America, it declares war. Kills thousands upon thousands of ordinary Iraqis. Stops short of removing the thugs, instead calls upon the people to rise up and do the overthrowing, then stands aside while the uprising is quelled with the loss of 50,000 lives.

12 years of economic sanctions follow, during which time a widely quoted figure of 500,000 Iraqi children die. The West argue that it is not their fault, but the thugs fault. No matter. The dead children stay dead.

For a variety of reasons, attention turns again to Iraq and the thugs are finally kicked out, with the cost of a relatively low number of dead Iraqis. The Americans rub their hands in glee at the prospect of re-building Iraq, the biggest re-building since the Marshall Plan helped Germany and Japan after their defeat in WW2. But this time there is a difference. Whereas the Marshall plan was an altruistc act with the victors, magnanimous in victory, footing the bill, this time the defeated will be forking out the dosh. The winners will not make Marshall's mistake again and set up the loser's economy to become strong for decades to come. Oh no. That wouldn't do at all.

And we wonder why they are not grateful.