BBC Panorama - Iraq: The Price of Victory

Every week in Iraq coalition soldiers are being wounded and killed in a conflict which is crippling the reconstruction effort.

For three long, hot and increasingly violent summer months, a Panorama team has been filming on the streets of Baghdad, day in day out recording scenes of a city still at war.


This powerful documentary examines the nature of the resistance in Iraq, gaining access to American troops as they hunt down paramilitaries.

This is a story of men who came to rebuild a country but who found themselves sucked into an urban guerrilla war instead.

This is a story also about Baghdad's five million Iraqis whose gratitude over liberation is in danger of being squandered amidst a deepening unease over occupation.

Throughout the programme Panorama scrutinises Iraq's new "occupiers", questioning whether the world's most powerful nation is up to the task of rebuilding a country as effectively as it can defeat it in war.

As the reconstruction process falters, Panorama is invited to quiz the key players at the heart of the new regime, including Coalition chief Paul Bremer and the former New York cop and so-called "Baghdad Terminator" Bernie Kerik.

Kicking off the 2003 autumn run in Panorama's 50th year, this film also features the last television interview with UN Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, just 48 hours before his office was destroyed in a car bomb attack.