IRAQ: ROBERT FISK

Counterpunch: Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe By ROBERT FISK

A few hours before Lord Butler of Brockwell was attesting to the "good faith" of Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq, Sabr Karim paid the price for working for "new Iraq".

The father of seven and a senior auditor in Iraq's new Industry Ministry--his job was to scrutinise the lucrative contracts given to businessmen to rebuild the country--arrived home in the Saadiyeh suburb of Baghdad with his family's breakfast of milk, cream and bread from a local grocery store. That's when two men in a pick-up coolly fired two bullets into his stomach and two into his head. His children found him lying on the pavement, one leg still in his car.

In Iraq, the funeral tent is traditionally pitched in the street outside the victim's home, but when I went to pay my respects yesterday it was blocked in by cars to prevent suicide bombers driving a vehicle into the tent--and not without reason. For when Sabr Karim's brother and son-in-law went to the family's mosque to collect a coffin for the dead man, someone had left a bomb inside. Another day in the life --and death--of "new Iraq".