Iraq three years on: Don't look away

And don't believe all that our leaders tell us about democracy. Three years after the toppling of Saddam, Iraq is a bloody mess. Yesterday 70 people were killed in an attack on a Baghdad mosque. Patrick Cockburn reports on three years of broken promises in a blighted land

Independent: ...George Bush and Tony Blair have for the past three years continually understated the gravity of what is taking place. It has been frustrating as a journalist to hear them claim that much of Iraq is peaceful when we could not prove them wrong without being killed or kidnapped. The capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the handover of sovereignty in 2004, the elections and new constitution in 2005 have all been oversold to the outside world as signs of progress.

The formation of a national unity government is now being presented as an antidote to violence. "Terrorists love a vacuum," said the Defence Secretary, John Reid, citing his experience in Northern Ireland. But one Iraqi official remarked caustically that the three main communities - Sunni, Shia and Kurds - do not "hate each other because they do not have a government, but rather they do not have a government because they already hate each other". Read more