Be Careful

"Be careful," warned a senior Iraqi government official living in the Green Zone in Baghdad, "be very careful and above all do not trust the police or the army."

He added that the level of insecurity in the Iraqi capital is as bad now as it was before the US drive to make the city safe came into operation in February.

The so-called "surge", the dispatch of 20,000 extra American troops to Iraq with the prime mission of getting control of Baghdad, is visibly failing.

There are army and police checkpoints everywhere but Iraqis are terrified because they do not know if the men in uniform they see there are, in reality, death squad members. Be careful...