gone to the blogs
Read John Quiggan's piece on wishful thinking.

One of the most striking features of the war so far has been the fact that, on a wide range of issues, Iraqi official statements have been a more reliable source of information than those of the US and allied governments. Within the first day or so of the invasion, US sources on the spot in Southern Iraq were claiming the capture of towns like Nasiriya and Umm Qasr, the surrender of entire Iraqi divisions and predicting the imminent fall of Basra. Meanwhile, Iraqi officials in Baghdad were denying all this and claiming that their forces were fighting on. Even for someone as skeptical of US official pronouncements as me, it did not seem difficult to tell who had the facts on their side and who was merely blustering.

But as it has turned out, the Iraqis were right on all these counts, while the US was wrong. The Iraqi claims may have been just lucky guesses but it seems more likely that their communications have not been disrupted to the extent that the US has claimed.

Over the weekend I tried to keep a running tally of the number of times Nasiriya fell to the coalition but I soon lost count. Ditto the number of times the 'pockets of resistance' were eliminated in Umm Qasar.

People are dying, on both sides, because the coalition's leadership choose to believe their own propaganda.