It's now three years and a month since George Bush declared "Mission accomplished" in Iraq, but of course the chaos has continued. Iraq is a very dangerous place for everyone. Between 30,000 and 100,000 Iraqi civilians, 2,471 US troops, 223 coalition troops (including 113 Britons) and 87 journalists have been killed since the invasion. Childhood deprivation, already immense as a result of sanctions, has worsened, as have many aspects of life for the local population.
In a war in which non-embedded journalists have been targeted as a matter of policy by the US military, getting accurate independent reports has been difficult. And Robert Fisk and John Pilger have added their weight to stories about special forces trained by the coalition deliberately fomenting strife between Sunni and Shia in a classic imperial attempt to divide and rule the population.
The latest edition of campaign group Media Workers Against the War's newsletter points out that the massacre of 25 people by US forces at Haditha was exceptional because it WAS reported.
I spoke earlier to Dave Crouch, chair of Media Workers Against the War, about the difficulties of getting the truth from Iraq.

For more see: www.iraqbodycount.org and www.stopwar.org.uk
The Stop The War Coalition is holding its fifth annual conference in Friend's House at Euston this Saturday. You can register at the website.