The people of Baghdad have come out on to the streets to take back the property and goods that are rightly their own. This is called "looting" and "anarchy" and "chaos" in alarmist terms by the press.

There certainly appears to be looting going on, and anarchy it may well be, but chaos it would appear to be not. The pictures and reports on the ground suggest the "looting" of the property and infrastructure of Saddam's regime is occurring in an orderly fashion in a spirit of co-operation.

The gravest threat right now facing the population of Baghdad and Iraq is the ongoing presence and threat of several hundred thousand American troops who have randomly killed thousands of Iraqi (not to mention British) citizens in recent weeks in a frenzied attack conducted under the altered mindset of war.

The scenes of jubilation on the streets of Iraq by a couple of hundred people captured by American news footage and beamed via satellite around the world was tempered by on-the-spot reports from the Sydney Morning Herald's journalist in Baghdad, Paul McGeough.

In his dispatches McGeough has consistently reported Iraqi civilians, including those on the streets smiling and waving to the cameras, sounding words of alarm and trepidation about the threat of US colonisation in the same sentence as expressing relief at the fall of their dictator, the US's ally for so long, Saddam Hussein. This was highlighted in one brief moment by the unanimous horror and stunned silence by the "jubilant" crowd witnessing the covering of the face of a statue of Saddam Hussein by AN AMERICAN FLAG. Someone in Washington watching live, acutely aware of the symbolic significance, quickly ordered its removal.

These scenes, cynically lauded over by war loving Arab haters in the US, Britain and Australia, also contrasts with the one million people who marched in Baghdad on February 16 to oppose the American lead slaughter at the same time as another million people marched in London and many more millions rallied across the world.

Along with the outspoken and proud misanthropy of those most severely damaged and psychologically unbalanced of people - American soldiers - the rest of the world will wake up to an Iraq that has not changed in any meaningful way as the US govt imposes its will here as it has done for decades and resulted in the deaths of at least one million Iraqis. And as it has done in Palestine and across the Arab world supporting every hated dictatorship in the region.

Since the liberation of Afghanistan has come and gone and the welfare of this sad and sorry nation's population is not in vogue, it might be worthwhile considering how its people are faring.

Check for yourself if you have the stomach for it. According to any credible report, they are suffering under a system of the utmost brutality and chaos imaginable, all orchestrated by the US, with their puppet ruler in power.

Wonder what's in store for Iraq?