"I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning," he added.

The public criticism from a serving military official is certain to cause a stir.

Several British media outlets are reporting that Defence Secretary Des Browne has summoned Dannatt for a meeting on Friday.

Dannatt, who just took over the post in August, said he was concerned about the implications in Britain. He said a "moral and spiritual vacuum in this country" has been exploited by Muslim extremists.

Dannatt, 55, has been deployed in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Germany.

He was commissioned at Sandhurst military academy, where Prince William is an officer cadet and Prince Harry recently graduated.

According to the paper, Dannatt said he understands why William and Harry are eager to serve abroad but has not yet decided whether they will be allowed to fight in Afghanistan.

"I shall write to the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions with a view to considering the appropriate steps to bring the persons involved in this incident to justice."

Mr Walker said he was recording a verdict of unlawful killing because Lloyd had been fatally wounded when he was being rescued by a civilian minibus in full view of American tanks.

There was no justification of self defence, he said, as there would have been earlier when the Americans were firing against Iraqi forces. It was only after the minibus stopped to pick up the wounded, including Lloyd, that the Americans opened fire, the coroner added.

Lloyd and three ITN colleagues were caught in crossfire between Iraqi and American forces as they drove towards Basra on March 22 2003, soon after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Cameraman Daniel Demoustier was the only member of the team to survive, after throwing himself from the car he was sharing with Lloyd.

The inquest heard evidence that Lloyd was shot in the back by the Iraqis and then fatally wounded in the head by fire from a US tank as a civilian vehicle attempted to rescue him.

The other members of the team, translator Hussein Osman and cameraman Fred Nerac went missing in the gunfight. Osman's remains were later traced to the scene, while Nerac's body was never found, though the inquest heard it was likely he had died in the incident.

Summing up the inquest, the coroner said: "It is only now that the sequence of events that led to this tragedy can be discovered, for a tragedy it is when the lives of innocent civilians are lost.

"I am certain that the world is a lesser place following their sad death. Their professionalism and dedication in the face of danger is and can only be admired by those they left behind.

"Preparations were detailed and thorough and began many months before the deployment.

"In my view, on the evidence I have heard, those preparations, from the initial setting of Independent Television News, through their training of staff and equipment, was of the highest possible standard."

David Mannion, the editor-in-chief of ITN, said the company would fully support Lloyd's family to "bring those responsible for Terry's death to account before a court of law".

Speaking after the inquest, Mr Mannion said: "All of us want and need to know the truth. Terry Lloyd was killed in an unlawful act by a US marine who fired directly at the civilian minibus in which Terry, already badly injured, lay helpless.

"But we do not know the identity of the marine who shot him. ITN therefore fully supports the Lloyd family in their pursuit of justice and we welcome the coroner's decision to write to the attorney general and the DPP in an effort to bring those responsible for Terry's death to account before a court of law.

"I would also like to say something that I know Terry would have wished me to say. Independent, unilateral reporting, free from official strictures, is crucial; not simply to us as journalists but to the role we play in a free and democratic society.

"The loss of Terry, Fred and Hussein in pursuit of that aim has had a devastating and permanent effect upon ITN.

"In tribute to Terry, Fred and Hussein, ITN can do no better than quote the words of the coroner himself when he described them as 'men of the highest calibre'.

"Finally, ITN would like to pay particular tribute to our cameraman, Daniel Demoustier, whose evidence underlines how close he came to being killed and whose only thoughts in the immediate aftermath of this terrible tragedy were not for his own safety but for that of his colleagues."

The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: "We welcome the coroner's decision to report his finding to the attorney general and the DPP and believe they should immediately commence proceedings to bring the perpetrators of what is nothing short of a war crime, to justice.

"The killing of journalists with impunity must never, ever go unpunished. Any attempt to silence journalists in this way must never succeed.

"We would also like to again express our deepest sympathy to the family for their tragic loss. The inquest verdict has confirmed what we always suspected: that Terry's death was not an accident in the theatre of war but a callous act of murder."

"Aljazeera was being targeted at the time because the people who were waging war on Iraq didn't like what it was showing.

"We talk about terrorism, this is pure terrorism."

Al-Sheikh also said that Aljazeera will ask for an official British statement on Blunkett's claims.

"In the past, we got in touch with the Americans and asked them to apologise or to hold an investigation. But we haven't heard anything from them.

"This time, we will also complain," he said, adding that an official statement would be released later.

Blunkett's claims

During his interview with Channel 4, Blunkett, who is promoting a new book, said that he had told Tony Blair, the British prime minister, that Aljazeera television transmitting equipment should be targeted because it was broadcasting "propaganda".

"There wasn't a worry from me because I believed that this was a war and in a war you wouldn't allow the broadcast to continue taking place," Blunkett said.

"I don't think for a minute in previous wars we'd have thought twice about ensuring that a propaganda mechanism on the soil of the country you were invading would actually continue being able to propagandise against you."

The US has previously accused Aljazeera of aiding its enemies

Two weeks after Blunkett pressed the prime minister to attack Aljazeera, the American military bombed the station's Baghdad offices, killing journalist Tareq Ayoub.

Blunkett, however, said that although the British government considered targeting Aljazeera's transmission equipment, it considered that journalists were not a legitimate target.

"I think there's a big difference between taking out the transmission and taking out journalists - even if you don't agree with them," he said.

"I don't know whether it was a mistake or not, but I wouldn't call it legitimacy," he added, referring to the US bombing.

Media deaths

Since April 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that at least 80 journalists and 22 media support workers have died in the Iraq conflict - the overwhelming majority killed by members of Iraqi groups.

In addition to that tally, 11 employees of Shaabiya, an Iraqi television channel, were killed when their offices were attacked during the night by masked gunmen early on Thursday morning.

"We came in this morning and we saw the massacre," Hassan Kamil, executive manager of Shaabiya satellite channel, said.

"All were killed. We think gunmen broke into the house and killed them."

"We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear," he added. "As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time."

Dannat's comments are certain to infuriate Prime Minister
Tony Blair who is President Bush's key ally in the war in Iraq. He described Blair's policy toward Iraq as "naive."

It is highly unusual for a sitting military commander to publicly criticize the government's foreign policy.

"Whatever consent we may have had in the first place" from the Iraqi people "has largely turned to intolerance," he said.

The experience in Iraq, which U.S. officials once envisioned as the catalyst for democratic change in Arab countries, has emerged instead as a disturbing symbol of sectarian strife.

"Frankly, the administration has retreated even from a passive push for democracy," said Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Washington is now largely silent about actions taken by Middle East regimes to suppress political opposition.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who made an impassioned speech about democracy in Cairo last year, did not publicly criticize Egypt's repressive tactics during her recent visit.

"A lot of regimes are detecting a green light to go back to the past," Rubin said. "It's undercut any kind of credibility the United States has, not just now but well into the future, in any calls for reform."

Policy analysts have warned that eroding U.S. credibility on democratization jeopardizes American efforts to use reform as a weapon against growing Islamist militancy and al Qaeda propaganda.

They say the United States faces a generational struggle in the Muslim world, where deep-seated suspicion about American motives is exacerbated by the repressive and corrupt practices of governments allied with Washington.

"Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim-majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit," according to a recently declassified intelligence report on global terrorism trends.

'PERCEPTION OF HYPOCRISY'

The credibility problem is complicated by Bush's use of the democracy theme in speeches. Before the U.N. General Assembly, he portrayed the United States as a friend of freedom but cited autocratic regimes, including Saudi Arabia, as reformers.

"People in the region know about the Saudi government. They're not naive," said Thomas Carothers, head of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"The perception of hypocrisy is extremely high," he said.

Ellen Laipson, former vice chairwoman of the National Intelligence Council, a leading government think tank, suggested the White House may have now adopted a more pragmatic, longer term approach to reform.

"It is not something that they're going to be able to say they completed on their watch, or that they even know it is going to work on their watch," said Laipson, now head of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a public policy institute.

The Bush administration has supported democratization through programs such the Middle East Partnership Initiative, which has allocated almost $300 million over four years to reform, education and economic development.

But according to Rubin and former intelligence officials, democratization was never fully embraced by rank-and-file officials including diplomats, partly because the National Security Council failed to establish it as a priority.

Pro-democracy groups in Arab countries have become increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for meaningful reform. This year, Saudi liberals said they had abandoned hope the United States would pressure the government, even privately, to reform the absolute monarchy.

Even in Afghanistan, which Washington showcases as a democratic success story, observers cite a lack of follow-through on last year's elections for parliament and provincial councils.

"We are particularly concerned that there appears to be no effort going into helping build political parties ... as well as no talk of the district and municipal elections that are supposed to be held under the constitution," said Joanna Nathan, a Kabul-based analyst for International Crisis Group.

The lawmaker's comments were in a transcript of the debate provided by his opponent, Diane Farrell. Shays' campaign, contacted Friday, did not dispute the comments.

The congressman had been asked what the government should do to restore the nation's moral image in the wake of torture accusations at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.

Shays is waging a bruising re-election fight against Farrell, who had no immediate comment Friday on her opponent's remarks.

Shays stirred controversy recently when he defended House Speaker Dennis Hastert's handling of a congressional page scandal, saying no one died like at Chappaquiddick in 1969 when Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy was involved.

Abu Ghraib is the Baghdad prison where abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers led to an international scandal.

Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib were brutalized and sexually humiliated by military police and intelligence agents in the fall of 2003. At least 11 U.S. soldiers have been convicted in the scandal.