Bloodshed



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

A cruel and bloody civil war has started in Iraq, a country which Bush and Blair promised to free from fear and establish democracy. I have been visiting Iraq since 1978, but for the first time, I am becoming convinced that the country will not survive.

Three suicide bombers disguised themselves as women yesterday and, with explosives hidden by long black cloaks, killed 79 people and wounded more than 160 when they blew themselves up in a Shia mosque in the capital.

One bomber came through the women's security checkpoint at the Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad and detonated explosives just as worshippers were leaving at the end of Friday prayers. Two other bombers took advantage of the confusion to blow themselves up a few seconds later, killing the people who were trying to escape.

It makes me so angry to think that we were lied into an ammoral war, the Bush Junta (which includes Blair_ promised democracy instead all they have done is bring misery and death. Money which was supposed to of been earmarked for reconstruction has 'disppeared' (codeword for corruption, money being sent to coded Swiss bank accounts).

Iraqis have little or no infrastructure and now are at the mercy of a full blown sectarian civil war on top of the ongoing America and British occupation of their country.

Iraq is being sacrificed on the altar of profit and greed.