The anti-Americans were wrong

There was one thing surprisingly absent from last Monday’s handover of Iraq’s sovereignty by Paul Bremer, leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s new Prime Minister. It wasn’t an extravagant ceremony involving a star-spangled banner lowered to the accompaniment of a military band and a tearful speech by Paul Bremer. It was bodies. It is true that a youthful Glaswegian soldier was killed in a bomb attack in Basra, an American soldier was executed for the benefit of al-Jazeera TV viewers, and a hundred or so civilians have died in Iraq over the past week in continuing unrest. But those who predicted that this week would witness the mother of all bloodbaths, on a scale which would belittle the slaughter that accompanied the independence and partition of India in 1947, must now admit that they were wrong. When Hollywood turns its attentions to the Iraq war, more will be accidentally killed in the making of the film than died as a result of this week’s events.