Robert Fisk: So this is what they call the new, 'free' Iraq:

"Most of the American CPA men who have cleared out of Baghdad are doing what we always suspected they would do when they had finished trying to put a US ideological brand name on 'new' Iraq; they have headed off to Washington to work for the Bush election campaign. But those left behind in the 'international zone' - those we have to pretend are no longer an occupation authority - make no secret of their despair. 'The ideology is gone. The ambitions are gone. We've no aims left,' one of them said last week. 'We're living from one day to the next. All we're trying to do now - our only goal - is to keep the lid on until January 2005 [when the first Iraqi elections are supposed to be held]. That's our only aim - get past the elections - and then get the hell out.'

...Americans continue to hold Saddam - in Qatar, not in Iraq - and Americans ran the court in which Saddam appeared. American soldiers in plain clothes were the "civilians" in the court. American officials censored the tapes of the hearing, lied about the judge's wish to record the sound of the trial, and marked the videotapes "cleared by US military"; three US officers later confiscated all the original tapes of the trial...

... after the elections, if indeed they are held, we shall self-righteously claim we can no longer be blamed for anything that goes wrong in Iraq. We liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, we shall say. We gave them "democracy" - and look what a mess they made of it. "