The United Nations’ outgoing human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, has told reporters that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone. Three-quarters of the corpses coming into the city’s mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Pace blames Shia death squads under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.

In 2005, the Baghdad morgue received some 1,100 corpses a month, with around 900 of them showing signs of torture.

Between the death squads and the insurgent groups that are trying to ignite a civil war, the U.S. occupation forces are finding it difficult to accomplish anything.

One important development over the past few days is that it is clearly becoming very difficult to use American or British troops to keep the peace, undermining the argument that they are the only bulwark against civil war. The occupation forces lack the legitimacy to play the role of UN peacekeepers; it is almost impossible to have US soldiers defend a Sunni mosque against a Shia crowd, because if they open fire they will be seen as having joined one side in a sectarian struggle.

In Mr Pace’s view, the violence in Iraq is being made worse by the seizing of young Iraqi men by US troops and Iraqi police as they move from city to city carrying out raids. “The vast majority are innocent,” he said, “but they very often don’t get released for months. You don’t eliminate terrorism by what they’re doing now. Military intervention causes serious human rights and humanitarian problems to large numbers of innocent civilians … The result is that such individuals turn into terrorists at the end of their detention.”

The “stay the course” mentality of the Bush administration is becoming more and more disastrous. The likelihood of finding an good exit strategy is becoming slimmer. U.S. troops are little more than targets of convenience is a hopelessly lost cause.