17 years ago Saddam Hussein had just been captured and I was on my way across the desert to to Baghdad, to write this...

'MISERABLE makeshift tombstones, hacked out of polystyrene, marked the place where they had hurriedly buried the body-parts hosed from the road in the poor suburb of Al Bayaah.

A grimy, tense crowd stood and stared among the puddles as rescue workers gathered up the debris from yet another explosion in Baghdad. I asked them who they blamed.

'The Americans,' replied Abdullah, an angry, hostile man who looked ready to blame me as well. 'It is all their fault. This trouble and everything else.' T...