Green, white and dark all over

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent's intrepid on-the-ground journalist, reports from the ground in Iraq. Contrast this with the statement further below for a little Monday morning dose of reality-based vs. fiction-based (more concretely, everywhere else vs. Green Zone/White House).

Cockburn:

Iraq is a country paralysed by fear. It is at its worst in Baghdad. Sectarian killings are commonplace. In the three days after the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February, some 1,300 people, mostly Sunni, were picked up on the street or dragged from their cars and murdered. The dead bodies of four suspected suicide bombers were left dangling from a pylon in the Sadr City slum.

The scale of the violence is such that most of it is unreported. Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, said yesterday that scores were dying every day. "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

Unseen by the outside world, silent populations are on the move, frightened people fleeing neighbourhoods where their community is in a minority for safer districts.

There is also a growing reliance on militias because of fears that police patrols or checkpoints are in reality death squads hunting for victims.

WaPo:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney hailed the progress being made by Iraqi leaders to form a unity government yesterday, as the administration tried to dispel a growing perception that a continuing wave of sectarian violence has pushed Iraq into a full-fledged civil war.

Bush, speaking on the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, assured Americans that his administration is pursuing a strategy "that will lead to victory in Iraq,"...