The grandstand windows in the former Ba'athist parade grounds are smashed and the copper has been hacked off the dome. Overgrown shrubbery adds to the general state of neglect. Long gone is the bombast . . . it's now a makeshift training ground for the new Iraqi army, conducting manoeuvres in fou-foot-high weeds.

This general dereliction is found all over Iraq, but nowhere as pronounced as Forward Operating Base Loyalty (FOB). It was the heart of Saddam's intelligence operation, a vortex into which many disappeared, and it still instills fear in the locals.

One of the few women officers on a largely deserted base brings me to a dark cell with reinforced brick walls and sandbags jammed into the windows. "We have a pool, " she beams. "A rocket came through the roof last week, but it's open again."

Next morning, navigating through rubble and wreckage on the way to breakfast, an alarm starts blaring.

Ten seconds later, the first of 14 mortars explodes in the base. American gunners on the rooftops open fire on the attackers outside. Everyone ducks into bunkers to wait out the onslaught.

Jaish al Madhi (JAM), Muqtada alSadr's army, are known to park trucks in the neighbourhood, fire rockets and drive off before the humvees can drive out to get them. They know the Second Infantry's artillery unit won't risk killing locals by firing artillery rounds back.

Smoking cigarettes in shady bunkers has become a daily occurrence.

Last man standing Ten humvees are heading to a joint combat outpost (JCOP) shared by the US and Iraqi armies in southeast Baghdad. It's part of a 10-month-old routine of patrolling, clearing and raiding the area for JAM militia.

Platoon leader lieutenant Clay Hanna, a soft-spoken idealistic 29year-old with a sharp intellect, gives the brief. He plots a course through a dangerous neighbourhood where IEDs and small arms ambushes are common. He gives radio instructions for the last man standing, the chaplain says a prayer and the guys mount up, five to a humvee, with a gunner on a 50calibre machine gun in the hatch.

We twist through a Shia neighbourhood, weaving around piles of rubble and rubbish, getting stuck in dead ends while adults watch silently.

Little boys . . . fascinated by the gunner in the rotating turret . . . wave in excitement. On the other side of the neighbourhood, the Iraqi army has set up a temporary checkpoint. They are tipped off that there was a vehicleborne bomb (VB-IED) in the neighbourhood we'd just traversed. Luckily we missed it.

'We have little or no control' "It's frustrating, " says Captain Chris Holstead, taking a break from the computer war game that he's been playing for hours at the combat outpost. He's a New Yorker who joined up with a sense of outrage after 9/11. He doesn't see how anything will make a difference unless the Iraqi people stand up for themselves. Sunni areas such as Ramadi and Baquba are doing it, but so far the Shia areas have been slow to follow effectively. The Sunni people are more accustomed to leadership, more organised and better educated.

"At our level, we don't see an end in sight, " Holstead adds.

After 10 months on this tour, he's lost faith in the initial reason for the war because he doesn't see a tenable solution. They're an artillery unit that can't fire any rounds for fear of hurting the locals. Instead, they hunt militias like policemen, arresting them by the hundredload, conducting raid after raid, confiscating endless munitions, but they keep coming.

"We can grab bad guys all day, but that won't get us out of here, " captain John Smith says.

The question of whether the infiltrated or intimidated Iraqi soldiers can or will get on their feet is a point of contention for the US soldiers.

Hanna is a former landscaper who always wanted to be a soldier. He signed up in 2003 knowing he'd have to leave his young family to deploy and lead men in combat. He's more idealistic than his comrades but equally frustrated.

"If, tomorrow, there was a strong Iraq under the central government, it's because it's what Iraq wants, " he says.

"We have little or no control."

These soldiers don't have grand aspirations to change the world . . . they want their time to make some sort of difference and the lives of lost soldiers to mean something, but mostly they want to get out alive and home to their families. The initial reasons for going to war are irrelevant among soldiers so young they couldn't vote when it started. The question for them is what to do now.

"It's too late for us to leave, " says sergeant Omar Rivera, who was just awarded a Purple Heart medal and believes that to leave now is to hand the country over to JAM and al-Qaeda.

"We've lost too many lives and done too much work to just pull out."

One word leaves them all scratching their heads for a definition . . . winnable.

The commanders back at the FOB call it the successful partnership of US and Iraqi armies and the eventual transition of security, economy and politics to the Iraqis. They work diligently to that end. The rank and file do what they're told.

The 'phony sheik' It's 2am and time for the platoons to forget PC war games, kung-fu movies and the politics of war and get back in their lanes. Tonight, their mission is to raid the homes and arrest four militia leaders; one is a recent self-appointed sheik and JAM coordinator.

The raids are to be done in partnership with the Iraqi Army. At 4am, platoon leader Captain Hardy, a goodlooking mild-mannered 26-year-old, finally gets word that they're not coming and rolls out with five humvees, five machine guns, 19 M-4 rifles, five grenade launchers and helicopter support.

They take the road less travelled through a forest in the pitch darkness. With nightvision goggles, Hardy and driver Cory Cummings navigate along a narrow dirt road, teetering between ravines on either side and avoiding objects that could blow up under them.

"Left, right, right a little more, left, go left, GO LEFT!" yells Hardy. Corey misses the ravine by inches, but a humvee behind veers off and has to be towed out.

Dawn was breaking and prayers were starting by the time they arrived at the sheik's store. A couple of soldiers took bolt cutters, opened the store and filed silently inside where they found a huge crate of the supposed spiritual leader's ammunition.

The sheik wasn't at home either but his family, including his eldest son who was wanted for ambushing an Iraqi army patrol a few weeks earlier, was sleeping. After the soldiers kicked in the gate, the men of the house were soon in the yard on their knees with hands behind their heads, chattering in Arabic, while the women screamed and helicopters roared overhead. It woke the neighbourhood.

On other streets, they arrested a man called Arshed who was wanted for firing mortars, kidnapping, collecting protection money and ambushing soldiers, and an old man who allegedly trains JAM members and goes by the name Abu Ali, which seems to be the Iraqi version of John Smith.

The three detainees were taken back to the JCOP and given cots in the yard where they lay blindfolded and bound till they could be taken to the base. Hardy wasn't worried about the phony sheik and expected him to show up back at his house over the next week or so, because he believes himself to be above the law.

The next morning at a Mulhalla or neighbourhood council meeting, Smith walked into an ambush of families whose sons had been snatched the night before. They passed around photos and insisted, despite the evidence given by their neighbours, that their offspring couldn't harm anyone.

At the meeting, the council decided to pool their money to buy a welder to fix the phone lines the Iraqi government had been promising for four years to fix. They're trying to get government-appointed bin men to work for more than an hour a week. They want the district government to replace the electricity man who decided to live on welfare rather than come to work, despite getting three utility trucks from the Americans.

Smith perseveres in trying to find the breaks in the Iraqi political chain so they can function independently and not keep depending on the US to come to the rescue. He helps them get American business grants under a program they hope will create more jobs, which will act as an incentive against the Madhi army's foot-soldiers and stop people planting bombs for money. They're trying to arrest infiltrators in the Iraqi army so the people will turn to them instead.