The Troops Are Afraid To Go Out At Night

In reality, the lies that took us to war in Iraq are slowly being stripped away from the men who sent the American and British armies to Mesopotamia. Mr Blair could turn up in Basra this week with his sub-Churchillian rhetoric about "valour", with his talk of "bloodshed and real casualties" and his sorrowful refrain for the British soldiers "who aren't going back home". But who sent the British to die in Iraq? If they were "real casualties", what happened to the weapons of mass destruction that were so real when Mr Blair wanted to go to war but which seem to be so unreal the moment the war is over?

Mr Blair says we'll still find them and we must be patient. But Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, tells us they may not have existed when the war began. The domestic repercussions of all this continue in London and Washington, but the reaction in Iraq is far more ominous. New graffiti on the wall of the slums of Baghdad's Sadr City (formerly Saddam City) which I saw on Wednesday tells its own story. "Threaten the Americans with suicide killings," it said bleakly.

It isn't difficult to see how this anger is building. The road from Nasiriyah to Baghdad is no longer safe at night. Robbers prowl the highway just as they slink through the streets of Baghdad. And I note an odd symmetry in all this. Under the hateful Taliban, you could drive across Afghanistan, day or night. Now you can't move after dark for fear of theft, killing or rape. Under the hateful Saddam, you could drive across most of Iraq without danger, day or night. Now you can't. American "liberation" has become synonymous with anarchy.

British reporter for London's the Independent, Robert Fisk, reports on the anarchy and hatred for America in Iraq. Click here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$