Hunt for Saddam turns into a nightmare

Baghdad - Bulldozers are still carefully sifting through the rubble of the Canal Hotel, the United Nations headquarters in Iraq, in case there are more bodies to find from this week's bombing. Those UN staff brave enough to stay on are working in tents outside the wreckage, under the searing sun.

But more than just the Canal Hotel is in ruins. Among the rubble lay the last illusions that the American occupation of Iraq might be working.

After a week in which Iraq's main oil pipeline to the north was set on fire, the water supply to Baghdad was sabotaged and the UN's chief envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, murdered with at least 23 other people, in what many are calling the worst attack on the UN in its history. No one doubts any more that the occupation here is in trouble.

It was made clear in the most savage way this week that the Americans and their allies are facing ruthless and organised resistance to their occupation. Yet it was also one of the Americans' most successful weeks in terms of their hunt for the former members of Saddam Hussein's regime. Both Hussein's former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and, more importantly, Al Hassan al-Majid, the man known as Chemical Ali, were captured.

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