Let that sink in for a moment.

The U.S. government invades Iraq for the purpose of toppling Saddam Hussein from power and installing a puppet regime headed by the likes of Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi or CIA favorite Iyad Allawi. Fixing the intelligence and facts around the policy, as the Downing Street Memo reflects, President Bush uses the prospect of WMDs to scare and cow the Congress and the American people into supporting his invasion of Iraq.

When the WMDs fail to materialize, Bush focuses on other rationales for the invasion, among which is “democracy-spreading.” That rationale involves a “caucus plan” whose obvious aim is to put a U.S.-approved ruler into office, in much the same manner that the current mayor of Baghdad was “democratically elected” by a panel whose members were carefully chosen by U.S. officials.

However, Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, rejecting Bush’s “caucus plan” for selecting Iraq’s new ruler, outmaneuvers Bush by instead demanding a national election. The election delivers control of Iraq to Sistani, who was born in Iran, and his Shi’ite followers, which could not have been a surprising result to Sistani, given that Shi’ites are the majority faction in Iraq.

Ever since power was turned over to the newly elected Shi’ite regime, the Pentagon has been using its military power to ensure the continuation of that regime. U.S. troops have been fighting, killing, and dying to protect the new regime from internal and external aggressors, thereby effectively making the Pentagon Iraq’s new department of defense.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Last week the new Iraqi regime entered into a military pact with Iran, which President Bush and the Pentagon have long maintained is part of an “axis of evil” and which is even the potential target of another U.S. military invasion.

So, U.S. troops have killed, maimed, and died and destroyed Iraq, with the result of installing a Shi’ite regime in Iraq that is now aligning itself with the Shi’ite regime in Iran, which U.S. officials say is a sworn enemy of the United States. And U.S. troops continue to kill, maim, and die to ensure the continuation of the Iraqi Shi’ite regime even while the president and the Pentagon consider invading Iran for the purpose of ousting the Iraqi Shi’ite regime there.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Innocent British citizens have now died as a result of terrorist attacks rooted in anger for Bush’s invasion of Iraq. And the American people live in constant fear of terrorism, not to mention perpetual assaults on their freedom by their own government.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, continue to maintain that Sistani’s Islamic Shi’ite regime has brought “freedom” to the Iraqi people, unlike the oppressive tyranny that the Islamic Shi’ite regime has brought to the Iranian people.

Yet, the new Iraqi regime is already in the process of establishing torture camps for detainees, and in the southern city of Basra alcohol venders and video sellers are being shut down or bombed and women are being forced to “dress appropriately” by official or unofficial morality police.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Imagine that the U.S. invaded Vietnam and held a national election that the communists ended up winning. Imagine further that the U.S. continued its military occupation of Vietnam to ensure that the new democratically elected communist regime remained in power. Imagine U.S. officials’ asking Americans to “support the troops” who were fighting and dying to preserve “democracy and freedom” in Vietnam.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As Jim Powell describes so well in his new book Wilson’s War, Woodrow Wilson’s “democracy-spreading” rationale for intervening in World War I resulted in many perverse outcomes, not the least of which was the triumph of Lenin and Soviet communism and the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, which ultimately led to World War II.

As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Already we’re seeing some of the perverse outcomes of President Bush’s “democracy-spreading” rationale for invading Iraq, including the Pentagon’s serving as the department of defense for Iraq’s newly elected Islamic Shi’ite-controlled government, whose rulers know as much about the genuine principles of freedom as the average Democrat or Republican, both of whom continue to call Iraq “free.”

It’s all just part and parcel of U.S. foreign policy and the failure of America’s foreign wars.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.