AP Photo

The carnage in Baghdad yesterday, with co-ordinated truck bomb attacks devastating half a dozen targets and mortars falling on government buildings, inflicted the highest number of dead and wounded since the Americans pulled out of Iraqi cities at the end of June. Nor was this an isolated incident: almost 700 civilians have died in the relatively short time since the Iraqis took over security in urban areas. The level of violence recalls the terrible year of 2006, when scarcely a week went by without its toll of destroyed mosques and markets, and numbed Iraqis almost counted on dying themselves or losing someone near and dear to them, so terrifying and inexorable were...