In Baghdad's wealthy Mansur residential district, the man was known simply as Masin. He was severely handicapped and could only walk with the help of a walker. But on this Sunday afternoon, Masin was driving his car, a Toyoto Corona, with his wife in the passenger seat and his teenage son sitting in the back as he turned onto a main street near his house. It was the wrong turn.

In front of a temporary road block that had been erected with a few vehicles by a horde of uniformed and non-uniformed armed men, Masin's car was stopped dead in its tracks by a hail of bullets. A shot through the windshield blasted away half of Masin's head. The dead man's wounded wife and child were taken away.

This Wild West scene in the Mansur district, at which the US' "Task Force 20," whose assignment is to hunt down Saddam Hussein, shot and killed five innocent people and wounded many others, was a completely botched undertaking - one of the many such occurrences that demonstrate just how far the Americans are from bringing peace to Iraq in the wake of their military victory.

Although it's been three months since May 1st, when President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier off the coast near San Diego and declared that the "main combat activity" in Iraq was "over," the situation there is still by no means under control.

Now Washington has proudly announced that thirty countries are willing to support the Americans in their difficult mission on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. However, most of those countries that could truly provide significant contributions, France and Germany or Pakistan and India, for example, are at best willing to do so under UN leadership. But so far Washington has been unwilling to transfer its control of Iraq to the United Nations.

Many of Bush' coalition partners are barely able to pay their own travel expenses. Warsaw, for example, will receive 200 million dollars to pay for a multilateral division led by the Poles that is to be deployed in southern Iraq. Their adventure in the Gulf is already costing the Americans upwards of a billion dollars a week, and costs are steadily increasing.

This also applies to the tours of duty of the US' 150,000 troops, whose morale is suffering tremendously under "deadly uncertainty" ("The Washington Post"). Many of these troops should have returned home long ago. But now General John Abizaid, commander of the US Central Command, is referring to the situation being faced by his troops as a veritable "guerilla war." Up to two dozen armed attacks against US soldiers are reported every day. Incidents without injuries or serious property damage aren't even documented anymore.

"While we do our best to break the backs of these hostile forces, their tactics are becoming increasingly desperate," says Colonel David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.

It is clearly becoming more and more dangerous. A key bridge was recently destroyed by remote-controlled explosives. Shortly thereafter, heavy explosives - detonated remotely or through a complex detonating mechanism - ripped apart an American M113 transport tank, killing one GI.

Patrols have been warned to pay special attention to stray Coca Cola cans; the enemy uses them to make explosive devices, placing them on the side of a road or in potholes.

A US Army spokesman barracked in one of Saddam's pompous palaces speaks of a "gradual improvement in the situation." But then he asks, clearly irritated: "What is going on in their heads? Don't they know that we're vastly superior to them?"

This doesn't seem to frighten such men as a former Republic Guard officer hiding in the Mansur district. "We are just at the beginning," claims this Saddam loyalist, "everywhere in Iraq thousands are helping us - until the governments in Washington and London become tired of their losses and withdraw."

For these reasons, the Americans have focused their hopes on the hunt for Saddam. They believe that if the despot in hiding can be tracked down, the resistance will collapse. Last week Washington's Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage announced that the US had missed its prey by "a matter of hours," and that "the noose is tightening around his neck."

In fact, the US authorities have been flooded with new information from the Iraqi people since the death of Saddam's sons, Udai and Qusai. Their next important catch was a man who had been one of the dictator's bodyguards for many years. The Americans hope that Adnan Abid al-Musslit, who was brought out of retirement to serve under Saddam shortly before the war, will be able to provide important information to help them in their hunt for the elusive dictator.

But Saddam, in spite of the fact that he is being hunted, recently made his voice heard in a taped message from his hiding place. In a call to arms to the Iraqi people broadcast by TV station al-Arabija, Saddam said that his sons had "died as martyrs," and: "Before you I mourn the death of Udai and Qusai and those who died with them. They are the pride of this nation. America will be defeated."

The last followers of this hated despot will certainly find it difficult doing so. However, supporters of the former regime are not the only ones who make up the resistance in Iraq. In this society in turmoil, there are many losers and disgruntled people. And there is also a tremendous potential for disturbance and radicalization among its growing Islamist elements.

As in most of the country, the security situation in the city on the Tigris is explosive. Robberies occur in broad daylight on Tahrir Square in the heart of the city or on Saadun Boulevard, the city's former magnificent mile. Shots and explosions can be heard constantly somewhere in every major Iraqi city.

"It's really terrible," says one US soldier in the city of Bakba, north of Baghdad, "that every shot you just heard could have killed someone, and you're not doing anything about it." But this level of concern tends to be rarely heard among the beleaguered occupiers.

To defend themselves, the Americans are becoming increasingly belligerent. Hundreds of Iraqis have died in recent weeks during commando missions in the search for resistance fighters and the figureheads of the dead regime. Thousands of Iraqis from all age groups have been taken away, their arms often painfully bound, their heads degradingly covered with paper bags or empty sandbags.

And in this country of vendettas, every person who is killed or dishonored, whether he is guilty or not, has a family and therefore many potential avengers. Enmity grows out of despair. Hardly any government agencies are open for business, and virtually all public services are in shambles. Even the basic supplies of water and power continue to fall short of pre-war levels. And when the Americans turn off the power in a neighborhood after a clash with Iraqis, the people can do nothing but vent their anger on these unwanted foreigners.

This is why chief US administrator Paul Bremer is aiming for free elections in Iraq by as early as next summer. He would gladly turn this chaos over to Iraqi hands. But the question as to who will assume control remains completely open at this point, since a significant political force has yet to emerge in Iraq.

Not even the Iraqi national council, handpicked by Bremer, was able to agree on a joint president last week. Now 9 of its 25 members will preside on a monthly rotational basis.

This is a poor omen for a country which, with its rival factions, competing tribes and mutually antagonistic religious communities, seems on the verge of transforming itself into another Lebanon - a battlefield for warlords and holy warriors. If this happens, Mesopotamia could truly become a breeding ground for a new international terrorism.

In the opinions of a few Iraq experts, even the hope that Saddam's destruction will help bring peace to Iraq will prove to be a fallacy. After his sons Udai and Qusai were killed by their pursuers last week, there was even an increase in the number of deadly attacks. Since then, an average of three US soldiers have been killed every two days.