NOT long after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, veteran reporter Patrick Cockburn was travelling south of Baghdad. At one roadside checkpoint two American soldiers were holding up placards with messages written in Kurdish. One read, "Drivers must get into one lane", the other, "Carrying weapons is forbidden".

As Cockburn recalls, a problem had arisen as neither solider understood Kurdish, the messages had been mixed up. One solider was angrily waving his placard . . . forbidding weapons . . . in front of a car which had just tried to jump the line of traffic.

Meanwhile, about 100 yards down the road, the other American soldier was totally confused as he asked drivers in English (which they did not speak) if they were armed and was receiving in return smiles and enthusiastic thumbs-up.

This small roadside exchange is used by Cockburn in his new book to illustrate the weakness of the US strategy in Iraq right from the outset of George W Bush's misguided military adventure in 2003. "Saddam Hussein had been overthrown but the violence was getting worse. The US evidently had no settled policy for ruling Iraq, but was making up its plans day by day, " Cockburn summarises in his new book, The Occupation . . .

War and Resistance in Iraq.

Since the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, a mini-publishing industry has sprouted. First, there were a multitude of tomes on Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Even more experts, commentators and journalists published on the back of the BushBlair quest for regime-change in Iraq (and, of course, the search for so-called weapons of mass destruction). Indeed, the post-9/11 publishing boom means that now it seems that any reporter who has spent even half a week embedded with the Coalition forces . . . and ensconced in the relatively safety of the Green Zone in Baghdad . . . feels the urgent necessity to turn their perspective into memoir and analysis. It's a case of 'have visa for Iraq . . . now can I please have a book deal'.

From every crowded field, however, a superior undertaking emerges and . . . with regard to the Iraqi publishing boom . . .

Cockburn's is that book. The Occupation War and Resistance in Iraq is superb reportage from the Co Cork-born journalist who has spent almost three decades working in the Middle East.

Cockburn . . . a reporter who cut his teeth in Northern Ireland in the 1970s . . . is a longtime correspondent for the London Independent newspaper. The book, just like his journalism, eschews exaggerated judgments or flowery language. The analysis is clinical.

The writing style is crisp and concise.

Where the book is at its strongest is in the assessment of the US role in Iraq since the invasion in early 2003. After the fall of Baghdad and the capture of Saddam, the author writes "over a year was to pass before the US military realised that they were not engaged in a mopping-up operation but were fighting a new war."

The telling of the story of this "new war" is a bleak one. While Washington and London have spent almost four years talking about 'turning points', Cockburn has seen first-hand the lawlessness, corruption and hatred that has torn apart postSaddam Iraq.

Recent indications of a changed policy direction in the Bush administration may be welcomed, but there is a tangible sense in Cockburn's analysis that it is already too late to salvage any normality from the wreckage of the last few years. Iraq is a mosaic of communities with differing interests, and what is now being fought is a double war . . . Sunni against Americas and Sunni against Shia. Policy change in Washington may eventually be able to extricate the US from the former, but the latter is now a civil war in everything but the official name.

As he recalls his travels in Iraq in the last few years, Cockburn quotes a teacher in Basra saying that "even at the height of his power only two million of the 24 million Iraqi ever supported Saddam Hussein". It is debatable if the Americans and the British would ever have counted on those levels of support.

Revolution Day: The Human Story of the Battle for Iraq Rageh Omaar OMAAR was the BBC's man in Iraq when the US-led invasion commenced in early 2003. His television prominence gave him celebrity status. Published a year after the invasion, the book recalls the atmosphere in Baghdad as locals readied themselves for the bombing of their city. It's the first draft of history and now suffers accordingly.

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah Bing West A SECOND book in three years on Iraq from this American reporter, No True Glory concentrates on the intense military battles in 2003 for control of the city of Fallujah. In part, the book reads like a thriller with frontline accounts of how the US military took on the Iraqi insurgency. A gripping read from an American perspective with the military and political failures of the Bush Administration in Iraq evident throughout.

In seach of Iraq: Baghdad to Babylon Richard Downes THE RTE reporter recalls his visits to Baghdad. The book is a mixture of anecdote and analysis that avoids hard-hitting conclusions, especially on US policy. It is a decent introduction to those who know little about the background to the conflict in Iraq.