Here's a comparison 282RA from very early on. In the South we opened up the port of Um Qasr and created employment, very quickly we were patrolling on foot in soft headgear faces uncovered, we built football pitches and played against the locals, fatalities around 170 since March 2003. Up in Fallujah very early days the US Forces arrive and find that the only building with services intact in the city is a school, so they boot the children and their teachers out of the school and take it over as their HQ. When the teachers and the parents protest they are fired upon. Patrols are undertaken from Humvees or from armoured vehicles, troops are always dressed in full combat gear, US fatalities to date 3,889.

This is a perfect example of why the US cannot be trusted to do the job of winning the peace in Iraq. We aren't making things better there, we are making them worse. But it's not incompetence that's causing this. The Bush administration intends for it to work out this way, because it has been their plan all along to create a justification for permanent bases and a permanent US occupation in Iraq.