© Jean-Marc Bouju/APAn Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his son at a center for prisoners of war captured by the US army near Najaf in March 2003.
If anyone doubted what kind of Iraq has been bequeathed by a decade of US-sponsored occupation and war,
today's deadly sectarian bomb attacks around Baghdad against bus queues and markets should have set them straight. Ten years to the day after American and British troops launched an unprovoked attack on a false pretext - and more than a year since the last combat troops were withdrawn - the conflict they unleashed shows no sign of winding down.
Civilians are still being killed at a rate of at least 4,000 a year, and police at about 1,000. As in the days when US and British forces directly ran the country,
torture is rampant, thousands are imprisoned without trial, and disappearances and state killings are routine.
Meanwhile power and sewage systems barely function, more than a third of adults are unemployed, state corruption has become an institutionalised kleptocracy and
trade unionists are tried for calling strikes and demonstrations (the oil workers' leader is in court in Basra on that charge tomorrow). In recent months, mass protests in Sunni areas have threatened to tip over into violence, or even renewed civil war.
The dwindling band of Iraq war enthusiasts are trying to put their best face on a gruesome record. Some have drifted off into la-la land: Labour MP Tom Harris
claims Iraq is now a "relatively stable and relatively inclusive democracy", which is more or less the direct opposite of reality.
