Many Americans, if not most Americans, woke up this week shaken and awed by the news that last Wednesday was the fifth anniversary of the US-led occupation of Iraq - longer than American involvement in any war, including World War II.

Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have so far been killed and more than 25,000 have been wounded, some very seriously, in this inconclusive war that came in retaliation for ...? terrorist attack in New York, on September 9, 2001, when nearly 3,000 persons, including several non-Americans, perished as the Twin Towers collapsed.

But this nightmare that many Americans have been enduring silently was topped by yet another turnaround when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson admitted that the US economy is facing a “sharp decline” and an economic crunch. This led the Bush administration to come to the rescue of the embattled investment bank Bears Stearns, whose stocks plummeted from $167 a share a year ago to $2 a share this week. It was bought by JP Morgan Chase, a rival institution, thanks to the rescue of the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, to the tune of $30 billion that will help bail out the beleaguered bank.

Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, was quick to link the serious economic downturn to the war in Iraq.

“We have blown it,” she said.

“And one of the reasons why we must end the war in Iraq is we cannot afford it. We have got to get control of our economic destiny. There are so many danger signs on the horizon.”

Clinton’s concern comes at a time when a Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz, maintains in his new book, co-authored with Harvard University lecturer Linda J. Blimes, that the real price of the war, including long-term care for veterans, will be $3 trillion. In fact, Stiglitz had just told Bloomberg News that the true cost is “much more like $5 trillion”, although his book is titled “The Three Trillion Dollar War”.

Another blow to the Bush administration’s Mideast stance came with the early retirement, this month, of Admiral William Fallon who less than a year ago was named the commander of the American forces in the Middle East, otherwise known as Central Command. His problem was attributed to his outspokenness and his emphasis on diplomacy rather than conflict in dealing with Iran, and to the fact that he endorsed further troop withdrawals - a step that suggested the United States had taken its eye off the military mission in Afghanistan.

But none of this has deterred headstrong US Vice President Dick Cheney who obviously wants the whole world to toe his line. The vice president is now on a 10-day visit to the Middle East, seeking regional backing for US view on oil prices, Palestinian-Israeli talks, Arab support for Iraq and Iranian designs in the region. He is scheduled to visit Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Turkey.

During his surprise visit to Baghdad, he maintained that the US effort to install democracy and stabilise Iraq has been a “successful endeavour” that has been “well worth the effort”.

The Washington Post, apparently unimpressed by his conclusions, ran the story on page 10, quoting him as saying further that the changes in security and political landscape in war-torn Iraq are “phenomenal” and “remarkable”. He once again repeated the Bush administration’s old and discredited mantra that there was “a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda” before the US invasion.

The vice president has obviously missed the critical view of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is bound to add to the diplomatic fallout that the lameduck Bush administration has been experiencing in the Middle East and Europe.

In a 15-page report, the Red Cross concluded this week that a humanitarian “crisis” has left millions of Iraqis with inadequate clean water, sanitation and healthcare.

“Five years after the outbreak of the war in Iraq, the humanitarian situation in most of the country remains among the most critical in the world.”

Meantime, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) also reported that more than 45,000 Iraqis have applied for asylum last year, up from 22,900 in 2006. This figure is only 1 per cent of the some 4.5 million Iraqis who have been uprooted by the war, half of which are displaced within Iraq and the remainder dispersed in neighbouring countries, primarily Syria and Jordan.

Let’s hope one leader of the countries he visits will advise the vice president of these appalling figures and point to his government’s failure to condemn the disproportionate Israeli attacks in Gaza, where over 120 Palestinians were killed, and the West Bank, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has described Israel’s recent actions as “ethnic cleansing”.