In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush termed Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "Axis of Evil", so as to describe these governments of being involved in and supporting terrorism while actively seeking weapons of mass destruction.
The phrase came to be much touted by not only the Bush administration, but also world leaders who, frankly, should have known better than to stigmatise whole countries with unfounded accusations.
However, it did effectively serve as a foundation for what ultimately became Bush's "War on Terrorism" (frequently misquoted as "War on Terrorists").
Three more to the list
Some five months later, the then future US Ambassador to the UN, John R. Bolton, gave a speech titled "Beyond the Axis of Evil" in which he added three more nations to Bush's "rogue states" -Libya, Syria and Cuba.
So, having laid down their cards on which countries the US would be watching with an extra eagle eye, it became merely a matter of time before a reason would be found to provoke public antipathy towards one or all nations. The first to fall foul of the Bush administration was, if anything, the easiest one: Iraq.
It was Iraq that invaded Kuwait; it was Iraq that was driven back by US troops and allies; it was Iraq that (allegedly) attempted to kill president George H.W. Bush, the father of the present incumbent.
But it was "H.W" who failed to go all the way into Iraq and totally eliminate Saddam Hussain and his deemed notorious regime - an unforgivable mistake in the eyes of the son, and one he fully intended to rectify to prove he was better than his father.
All this, of course, is now very well known and is a matter of public record. But with the sleight of hand the White House and Pentagon practise on foreign policy before a bemused public, like a card concealed up the sleeve of a magician, it is easy to overlook what has taken place.
Namely, that what appears to be, is not actually so but what the conjuror wants you to see.
Consequently, too often the public are given supposed facts of what did or did not happen, and is or is not about to take place. This massaging of fact occurs so frequently that it is most often impossible to determine the truth.
A notorious example of this is the alleged "Weapons of Mass Destruction" held by Saddam in Iraq. So deadly and so near completion for annihilating the Middle East and, at a stretch so we were told, London, that it became imperative to get into Iraq and destroy all its nuclear capabilities and rocketry power.
But once the invasion had taken place, there were no such bombs, as the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had said all along. But then it was much easier to discredit Hans Blix, a non-American and Head of the IAEA - the messenger of the bad news of the non-existent stock piles - than accept mistaken intelligence.
Other areas of mis-intelligence occurred so frequently that people began to wonder if US intelligence was an oxymoron.
I shall leave aside the embarrassing debacle of secretary of state Colin Powell's address to the UN Security Council, where he alleged he had definite proof of various nefarious devices, all capable of destroying half of mankind if Saddam was left to his own devices.
It was only later, after Saddam's downfall, that the possibility emerged Saddam may have been as ignorant of Iraqi's nuclear capabilities as the Western powers, because none of his underlings were prepared to tell him the truth and bring him out of his ideating.
Perhaps if they had or if Western intelligence-gathering resources had been better, then over 150,000 lives would not have been lost and a once modern Arab country bombed back to the early 19th century.
Now, there is yet another worry, and one connected to the infamous Axes of Evil. Now the CIA alleges North Korea has been helping Syria build a secret nuclear reactor for "non-peaceful purposes".
This means we can all expect the US to increase the rhetoric against Syria, while maintaining its animosity towards Iran, so as to continue with its threats of war in the region.
For behind this deception is, of course, America's necessity to remain in the region as military presence, merely to protect its domestic oil requirements. Any other reason is merely a ploy to make us believe the US has the finer interests of mankind at heart.
