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On the other side of a bridge over the river was a minibus taxi punctured

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On the other side of a bridge over the river was a minibus taxi punctured by shrapnel, its interior sodden with blood. Locals claimed it had been hit by a US missile, which killed one passenger and wounded nine others.But the White House and the Pentagon seem unable to take on board how swiftly the US political and military position in Iraq is deteriorating. Even after half a dozen rockets hit the al-Rashid Hotel, narrowly missing Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Secretary of Defence and one of the architects of the war in Iraq, US generals in Baghdad were still contending to incredulous journalists that overall security in Iraq was improving.In his blindness to military reality Mr Bush sounds more and more like the much-derided former Iraqi Information Minister, 'Comical Ali', still claiming glorious victories as the US army entered Baghdad. I heard from a shopkeeper in the centre of Fallujah that a Chinook helicopter had been shot down on the other side of the Euphrates river, which flows through the town. It is also spreading further north, to the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. But even as I was driving to Fallujah yesterday, just before the helicopter was brought down, I heard on the radio President Bush repeat his old mantra that "the Iraqi people understand that there are a handful of people who do not want to live in freedom."It is an extraordinarily active handful. It was the worst single military disaster for the US in Iraq since the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein started in March.

It means that the US forces in Iraq may in future have to rely less on helicopters and use the roads - which in this part of Iraq are almost equally hazardous. The destruction of the helicopter should underline the speed with which the war in Iraq is intensifying: 16 US soldiers were killed in September, 33 in October and a further 16 in just the first two days of November. A plume of dust and smoke was rising yesterday morning from a field just outside Fallujah, west of Baghdad, where a giant American Chinook helicopter, crippled by a missile, had crashed and burned, killing at least 18 and wounding another 20 of the soldiers and crew on board. If you would ask me to predict how important Iraq will be and whether Bush will be re-elected President, I will say the following: if a year from now - that is to say, a few weeks from the November 2004 elections - the major news coming out of Iraq is about problems to do with reconstruction and governance, then Bush will be able to say that, yes, there are problems but we are making headway.If, however, the dominant problems relate to security, with continued American casualties, then my guess is that this would be very negative and could spell trouble for the Bush administration, for Europe and for the region.. Unless more support is forthcoming from Europe and other major powers, for instance India, more and more Americans will ask why they should be forced to pay the full price. The temptation will then be to find an exit strategy that includes a significant withdrawal of American forces and major cutbacks in American grants and loans.These are the challenges that President Bush faces in the coming year. It would be premature to pronounce US operations in Iraq as either a success or a failure from the perspective of the coalition.

Undoubtedly, the majority of Iraqis are delighted to be out from under the yoke of Saddam Hussein. Very few, apart from some in the Sunni triangle, wish to go back to the days of Saddam, which were barbarous by any standards. However, it is not clear that Iraqis are yearning for western democracy when they do not have electricity and their daughters cannot go out on the street at night. Thus, it comes back to the reality that the security situation has to be put in order before the more grandiose projects for reconstruction and sovereignty can be implemented.The danger is that the United States finds itself in an election year with a lot of politics of its own to take into account. It is often said that the American public has a notoriously short attention span This is not true. Americans are prepared to pay the price for occupation, both in terms of casualties and money, provided that they see clear progress.

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