An incident with US troops in a Baghdad street gave Lara Marlowe a glimpse of the frustration felt by Iraqis.
It was such a tiny drop in the cataclysmic sweep of modern Iraqi history that I wouldn't mention it if it hadn't happened to me in a Baghdad street, if it hadn't taught me something about the way US forces see Iraqis.
I had just completed an interview at the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a pro-Iranian Shia party which participates in the interim government. Their headquarters in Baquba were attacked the previous day and four guards killed.
When I came out of the SCIRI building, a column of US Humvees had taken up position in the boulevard, presumably to reassure SCIRI officials. I was dressed like an Iraqi woman, in a long abaya and headscarf, so the soldiers must have assumed we were Iraqi.
The first rule of personal safety in Iraq is to avoid US troops. They're a magnet for gunfire, roadside bombs and RPG attacks, to which they respond indiscriminately. The fear of proximity is mutual: US troops want to keep a distance from Iraqis, whom they view as potential terrorists.
Our car was parked before the Americans arrived, and we had no choice but to pull out alongside the Humvees. The gunner on the lead vehicle gestured wildly, but it was impossible to pull further away without colliding with oncoming traffic.
As we passed his Humvee, the gunner puffed up his cheeks and let loose a glob of slimy, foamy spittle, in an arc that ended with our car. He thought we were Iraqi, so he spat on us. When the driver told his wife that night, she wanted to know why he didn't stop and fight the American, like a man.
It was nothing, really, just a glimpse of the daily humiliation that Iraqis put up with, the anger and frustration. There is nothing they can do about it, for US soldiers enjoy immunity from Iraqi law. One of the last acts of Paul Bremer, the US administrator who left Baghdad after the "transfer of sovereignty" on June 28th, was to extend immunity from prosecution to private contractors. The interim constitution drawn up under Bremer's supervision specifies that his decrees cannot be rescinded after his departure.
So Steven Stephanowicz and John Israel, the private military intelligence contractors from CACI International whom Major Gen Antonio Taguba accused of lying to his investigating team and instructing military police to abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib, need not fear punishment.
Soldiers spitting at Iraqi cars and prisoners being tortured are symptomatic of the same danger: an arrogant, selfish, deaf, blind but vociferous US administration that acts with impunity all over the world.
The CIA has stepped up its practice of "renditions": kidnapping "terrorist" suspects, then "sub-contracting" them to the secret police of friendly Arab regimes like Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for torture and interrogation.
I discussed torture in Iraq with a US military contractor in Baghdad a few days ago. As a result of Abu Ghraib, he predicted: "It'll still happen, but we'll get the Iraqis to do more of it."
The main purpose of the "transfer of sovereignty", it is widely assumed by Iraqis, is that Iraqi security forces, not Americans, will do the dirty work and dying.
A US source says the goal is for 80 per cent of military operations to be performed by Iraqis, 20 per cent by the US-led Multi-National Force. The Americans want the new prime minister Iyad Allawi to try his hand at defeating the insurgency. "We don't need the Americans to teach us how to torture," the former human rights minister Abdel Basat Turki says bitterly. The Americans nonetheless intend to hang on to more than 4,000 "security detainees".
The 15 months of anarchy since the fall of Saddam Hussein have been so harrowing that many Iraqis say they're ready for a pro-American dictator to replace Saddam. Allawi is jokingly called "Saddam Allawi" or "Shia Saddam".
There's a story making the rounds in Baghdad, surely apocryphal, that Allawi goes to police stations at night. "What are you here for?" he asks each prisoner. If the offence is minor, Allawi frees the detainee. If serious, he has him shot dead on the spot.
June 30th was declared a national holiday to mark the "transfer", though the event took place two days earlier. I took advantage of the quiet to go to the old souk in downtown Baghdad, where I bought a silver box. The shopkeeper nearly wept.
"This is a great day for me," he said. Why? "Because of the new government, and because I sold something," he replied. It was his first sale in eight months. "Since (the lynching of four US contractors in) Falluja, no foreigners come here," he explained.
Without security, there will be no economic recovery and no reconstruction. There's a 14-hour wait to buy petrol, in 45 degree heat, in Basra. The US says it's because insurgents keep blowing up the pipelines. Iraqis believe it's because Americans are stealing their petrol.
Allawi is a secular former Ba'athist. But the main leaders of post-invasion Iraqi are Muslim clerics: the Council of Ulemas, led by Sheikh Muthanna al-Dhari for the Sunnis; Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr, the Dawa and SCIRI parties for the Shia. Iraq may never be a secular state again.
One of the most striking differences between Sunni and Shia is their attitude towards foreigners. That day in the old souk, the Shia parking lot attendant greeted me with the sweetest words I heard in Baghdad: "We must protect her," he told my driver and interpreter. "The foreigners are our bridge to the world." The Sunnis are the mainstay of the Islamic "resistance" against US occupation, and many are deeply suspicious of Westerners.
"There is no need to make bombs," an employee at the Um al-Qura mosque, the headquarters of the Sunni Ulemas, told my interpreter while we waited for a press conference which was cancelled anyway. "We have to catch all the foreigners, the Iraqis who work for them, and the journalists," he continued. "That will solve the problem."