By Justin Huggler
Baghdad - Bulldozers are still carefully sifting through the rubble of the Canal Hotel, the United Nations headquarters in Iraq, in case there are more bodies to find from this week's bombing. Those UN staff brave enough to stay on are working in tents outside the wreckage, under the searing sun.
But more than just the Canal Hotel is in ruins. Among the rubble lay the last illusions that the American occupation of Iraq might be working.
After a week in which Iraq's main oil pipeline to the north was set on fire, the water supply to Baghdad was sabotaged and the UN's chief envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, murdered with at least 23 other people, in what many are calling the worst attack on the UN in its history. No one doubts any more that the occupation here is in trouble.
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'Why did they attack the UN when the real target is before them?' It was made clear in the most savage way this week that the Americans and their allies are facing ruthless and organised resistance to their occupation. Yet it was also one of the Americans' most successful weeks in terms of their hunt for the former members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Both Hussein's former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and, more importantly, Al Hassan al-Majid, the man known as Chemical Ali, were captured.
That the news of their capture was overshadowed by the week's other events shows how successfully those responsible for the bombing of the UN headquarters have been able to change the agenda in Iraq. The story is no longer about the hunt for Hussein and his henchmen - it is about an occupation in danger of turning into a nightmare.
Outside the ruins of the Canal Hotel one Iraqi asked angrily: "Why did they attack the UN when the real target is before them?" He was pointing to the American soldiers. But the message from the ruins seemed clear: no one is immune in the hell whoever was responsible for the bombing wants to turn Iraq into for the Americans.
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