Tony Blair has become the first “coalition” leader to visit postwar Iraq. However, it has not turned out quite as the British premier expected. The photo calls of the white-shirted politician, surrounded by groups of his beaming troops in camouflage fatigues, were easy enough. But his accompanying posse of journalists found themselves surrounded by ordinary Iraqis, eager to voice their anger at the results of the US-led invasion.

The destruction of Saddam’s police state has unleashed anarchy. Along with the political detainees freed by the war from Iraq’s jails were also the dregs of Iraqi society, real criminals guilty of heinous crimes. These men now prey upon the community which incarcerated them. Baath Party hoods meanwhile are doing all they can to stir up popular anger against the invaders. They have, it seems, both the arms caches and some very effective propaganda to achieve tangible results.

Thus that part of Iraq under British control, where Tony Blair targeted his victory visit, remains a lawless society where decent people fear to leave their homes. Basic services have yet to be restored and thousands of professional people have been unable to return to their jobs, let alone receive outstanding pay.

While the Americans seem happy to send in more troops to control their part of the country, the British appear anxious to reduce their commitment. That could be a recipe for disaster. For life to return to something resembling normal, the British military will need to gain the enduring confidence of the locals. That may mean more not less military personnel patrolling the vacuum that has been created by Saddam’s ouster.

For all his sincere talk, Blair seemed incapable of appreciating the pressure of anger building up in southern Iraq. Fine words by themselves are not going to save law-abiding Iraqis from robbery and murder, nor are they going to bring water flowing out of a tap nor electricity to power basic household appliances.

Indeed, Blair’s rhetoric may no longer be effective back home, either. Even as the British leader flew to Iraq, a story broke in London, leaked from a intelligence source, that Downing Street had sent back a British security report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with instructions that it be “jazzed up”. At the time, disgusted intelligence analysts, in whose view there was little evidence for Iraqi’s continued possession of such weaponry, did as they were told. This enabled the Blair to assure the British Parliament that not only did these weapons exist but Saddam only needed 45 minutes in which to deploy them.

On this basis, not the fact that Saddam’s regime was brutal and cruel, Parliament voted to send the British people to war. On this basis, many Britons who had been skeptical about war, believing it to be just George Junior concluding daddy’s unfinished business for him, decided that their prime minister had compelling intelligence of Saddam’s deadly weaponry, to justify the assault. Given that an earlier published report about these weapons’ existence, turned out to be a farrago of nonsense, cribbed from a ten-year old postgraduate thesis found on the Internet, the level of trust the British citizens placed in their premier, was extraordinary. Now the evidence is mounting that he played them all for a sucker. As the saying goes, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.