Making a hooligan into a hero (90% Iraqis view US as Occupier)

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It was always clear that the success of the US-led occupation in Iraq would depend on whether it could make friends faster than it made enemies. Yet through most of the year since the war ended, the reverse has been the case - as a credible poll reported in yesterday's Financial Times dramatically illustrated.

The poll, conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, shows that nine out of 10 Iraqis see American forces as occupiers, not liberators. More alarming still, it establishes that Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia radical confronting the coalition in the south, has suddenly emerged as the second most popular figure in Iraq.

That this poll was conducted before revelations of the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib makes its findings even more salutary - with less than six weeks to go before the Coalition Provisional Authority is due to hand over to an interim Iraqi government it has yet to identify.

There is no single explanation for the intensifying Iraqi hatred of the occupiers. But a root cause is the violence that has enveloped so much of the country, and the way US troops have used disproportionate and reckless force in response not only to the insurgency but to any perceived threat.

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Altogether, it is estimated that thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and, while some accidents are admitted, US officers defend most such incidents - as they did yesterday - as "within our rules of engagement". But the occupation is not only making far too many enemies, it is building some of them into national heroes.

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"Now, the young Sadr ranks only behind Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shia cleric and a force for stability, in the estimation of all Iraqis, including the minority Sunni - a catastrophic own-goal for the occupation."