They were not the only casualties in the country last Monday. At least 20 people were killed in the southern city of Basra after a car bomb blew up in a market crowded with families enjoying the end of Ramadan. The British controlled Basra is meant to relatively safe. But not anymore.

They were not the only civilians to die, either. Earlier in the day, the BBC had reported how there were “'many dead' in a US strike near Karabilah, on the border with Syria. Although the US said it was a “precision” strike, local doctors said there were more than 30 dead, including women and children.

Two mortar rounds hit a major junction near Iraq's oil ministry, killing a civilian and wounding four others. In the town of Bani Saad, north-east of Baghdad, another mortar hit an Iraqi army base, killing two soldiers and wounding seven. And so it goes on. Iraq may have a constitution, but it’s pages are soaked in blood.

Nor were the 2000 American soldiers killed the only grim centenary last month. One hundred journalists have now died reporting the conflict. Whilst the abduction and subsequent release of the Guardian’s Baghdad correspondent, Rory Carroll, received huge media coverage, of the journalists to die so far in Iraq this year, 31 out of 32 have been Iraqis. Their deaths have been largely unreported in the West.

The number of British troops killed is fast approaching one hundred too – currently standing at 97. Morale of British troops is said to be at their lowest since the invasion in 2003. The political debate about pulling British troops out or Iraq is rising in Britain. Last weekend, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Panorama held a live debate on the issue. There were speakers from both sides from top rank generals to mothers who had lost sons. From the Iraqi Ambassador to London, to anti-war activists. Although they disagreed on when British troops should leave there was one thing they were all agreed on: no one knew how long it would take to stop the daily carnage.

Andrew Bearpark, who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority for eighteen months and who is now a consultant to a private security company in Baghdad was one of the experts on the programme arguing it was time for British troops to leave. The situation, he said “had got worse. To start with things were getting better in the second half of 2003 and early part of 2004, schools were reopening, power production increased, and your average Iraqi could see things getting better. Sadly since February 2004, things had been getting worse. It looks like they are getting worse month after month after month”. 

Bearpark is backed by new Pentagon figures that show that the number of Iraqis killed or wounded has risen sharply in recent months. A staggering 40 Iraqis a day were killed on average in 2004, increasing to around 50 a day for most of this year. However in September it was. That is sixty-four families having their lives destroyed every day. The Iraqi death-toll is the continuing tragedy of this illegal war.  It is a crime against the people of Iraq.  They were promised liberation – not devastation. Iraq Body Count, which compiles casualty figures puts the Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 30,100 since March 2003, but admits this is an underestimate. A comprehensive figure published in the British journal the Lancet says the figure could be as high as 100,000.  

Then there are tens of thousands of wounded and maimed. Then there are the untold numbers psychologically affected by war.  The story of shattered Iraqi lives is largely untold in the West. Iraqis have become statistics to be reported only in large numbers not given the dignity of detail.

Sometimes the personal stories are told, but they are the sad stories of the families left behind. Last month, the Guardian reported the case of American war-widow, Elaina Morton. Three months after her husband, Staff Sergeant Benjamin Morton, was killed by insurgents in Mosul, Elaina picked up a shot-gun and killed herself. The war is like a spider’s web of sorrow and grief infects everyone. It is like a cancer that grows.

The heart of that cancer is the White House, where the lies are finally being exposed, with the unfolding “Plamegate” saga. The White House is being rocked by the scandal of who leaked the identity of covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson. It was Plame’s husband, a former diplomat, Joseph Wilson, who had visited Niger to investigate whether Iraq was seeking to buy uranium to process into nuclear weapons. Wilson concluded that this was unlikely.

However the claim still ended up in Bush's State of the Union address to push for the case for war. When Wilson later accused the Bush Administration of exaggerating the case for war, his wife’s identity was leaked, although it is a crime to knowingly divulge the identity of an undercover CIA officer. A two–year year grand jury investigation has now found Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter" Libby, guilty of lying and obstructing justice. He has now resigned. So the most important aide to the most powerful vice president in America’s history has been indicted as a liar. He faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of $1.25m if found guilty. President Bush’s closest aid, Karl Rove is still under investigation.

Not surprisingly, the Washington media is obsessed with the Plame-gate scandal. No one likes a scandal more than the press. The British media has devoted hundreds of column inches to it as well.

But the on-going carnage of innocent civilians is the real scandal of the Iraq war. The Iraqi people were promised a better future. But that has not happened.  Professor John Sloboda from the Iraq Body Count says that the "The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq”.

It is important that the lies of the White House are finally exposed. Because those lies cost innocent lives. Today there will be more lives destroyed in Iraq. Tomorrow more will die. When will it end? We do not know. Events are still unfolding in Washington as to whether Karl Rove may be charged. Bush may be terminally damaged politically by the affair and may limp on until the end of his Presidency for another three years. Every day of Bush’s Presidency people will continue to die in Iraq because of the lies his administration told. No one knows when the war will end. Apart from the dead and they are not telling.