The United States government has already, before and during this appalling war on Iraq, shown itself to be among the most cynical and ruthless of imperialist powers in history. But it has also been the most blatant, and apparently successful, in hiding its aggressive designs behind a cloak of democratic idealism. Which other imperialist power would have dared to name its colonial war of occupation "Operation Iraqi Freedom"?

Before this war, the supposed reason for the aggression on Iraq was the argument that the regime of Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" which it was hiding. This argument was used by the United States to enforce eleven years of extremely debilitating sanctions imposed by the United Nations against Iraq. These sanctions led to a collapse of Iraq's economy and have meant near starvation of a significant part of the population and actual death of more than a million Iraqis, mostly children.

Just before the war, the Bush and Blair regimes became increasingly desperate as the United Nations weapons inspectors could not find any evidence of any weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. This has been an important propaganda tool for these governments even within their own countries. Surveys reveal that 87 per cent of the population of the United States still thinks that it is likely that Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction." Yet only 38 percent believe the war is justified if the United States finds no conclusive evidence that such weapons exist.

So it remains important for the US to find some evidence of these "smoking guns", if only to convince its own population – since the rest of the world mostly sees the war only too plainly. Within the US media, it is widely accepted that this is one expectation that must be met: coalition forces need to uncover weapons of mass destruction. Without such discovery, the official case for the war falls apart.

But so far, this is one of the many official lies of the Bush and Blair administrations that have already been exposed in the first two weeks of war. Weeks of intensive search operations by US, British and Australian special forces, which began before President Bush formally launched the war on March 19, have failed to produce any stockpiles or other evidence of Iraqi chemical or biological weapons.

Also, so far in this war, despite being battered by very heavy bombing, the Iraqi regime has not used a biological or chemical weapon. Around the world, people – even the UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix - are increasingly asking: where is the evidence to justify this war of aggression?

The US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked why US forces had not found any of biological and chemical weapons whose existence, was supposedly proven by specific American intelligence. His answer was as typically contradictory as all US war reports have been. Rumsfeld boasted that US and British forces controlled vast tracts of Iraq, but said they had not yet reached the parts of the country where the weapons were being concealed—"around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

But in fact the alliance forces have already been systematically searching for such weapons, if only to find some justification for this war. Even before the first bombs fell on Baghdad, special operations teams from the US, Britain and Australia flew into Iraq's western desert to capture four targets of highest priority to the US central command. Altogether, US forces have now tested at least 10 sites, said to be "their best intelligence leads". "All the searches have turned up negative," a Joint Staff officer told the Washington Post. "The munitions that have been found have all been conventional."

The Bush administration is now saying no weapons of mass destruction may be discovered until well after the war is over. It is also insisting that it will conduct the weapons hunt without the UN agencies that hold Security Council mandates for the job. It will not agree to any role for the UN inspections agencies, UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency, both of which contradicted Washington's pre-war claims.

Administration officials are already negotiating contracts with private companies for some of the work. Typically, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company with close links to the Bush administration and which already has bagged a contract to put out the oil well fires in Iraq, is in the running for this contract.

Naturally this raises fears that the US or Britain will plant evidence of Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons activity. The world already knows that these governments are willing to resort to cheating to push their line. Documents offered to the UN Security Council by the US and Britain as evidence Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger had proven to be crude and obvious forgeries.

The Pentagon has already resorted to spreading false reports. Last week it claimed to have found a possible chemical weapons plant in southern Iraq, and to have intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein had drawn a "red line" around Baghdad beyond which US troops would be attacked with chemical weapons. Both reports turned out to be false.

If anything, the Iraqis actually have more to fear from weapons of mass destruction unleashed by the US and Britain. The historical record shows that they have not been squeamish in using weapons of mass destruction in order to ensure their own victory.

During World War II, the US military unleashed chemical weapons on the people of Japan before dropping two atomic bombs. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States carpet-bombed Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with napalm and other chemical agents, killing hundreds of thousands of people and poisoning Indochina's soil and water for decades. In the 1991 Gulf War, the Allied forces used cluster bombs and napalm munitions with ghastly effects. US-led forces blasted depleted uranium missiles and ammunition throughout Kuwait and Iraq, leaving some 320 tons of radioactive material in the soil, and leading to much higher incidence of cancer among the people.

Already in this war, the US has dropped around one thousand bombs every night on the towns and cities of Iraq, by its own reckoning. Several journalists have claimed that these have included cluster bombs and napalm bombs, both of which are banned by international law. The toll of civilian dead keeps mounting, as these bombs hit market places, public offices, even hospitals.

And as the war becomes more difficult for the US and its allies, the chances are that the conflict will become even uglier and more violent, with the US-led forces effectively creating a mass pogrom of innocent Iraqis. It is now clear to the world, which government has weapons of mass destruction and is only too willing to use them. The question is: how can this awful power be disarmed?