A new Amnesty International report details the killings, injuries, torture and other ill-treatment of protesters who, inspired by the democracy uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa, have demonstrated in their tens of thousands across Iraq.

Iraqis have embarked on a new phase in their struggle for dignity and freedom, says Sami Ramadani, inspired by the uprisings of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain.

The government panicked and declared a state of emergency, banning the movement of all vehicles and bicycles, but huge demonstrations took place not only in Baghdad but throughout Iraq. The main demands included: work, water, electricity and sewage systems, but political demands were also conspicuous.

Facts were bled of their real significance. Only the most aware readers would have understood that the US had not been duped, but rather that the White House had exploited a "fantasist" -- or desperate exile from a brutal regime, depending on how one looks at it -- for its own illegal and immoral ends.

Obama is silent about the protests in the other Tahrir Square in Baghdad -- not a word, even after the killing of at least 29 protesters by Iraq's security forces.

Praising people power in Egypt, Libya etc not extended by Barack Obama to protests in Iraq, still under US occupation, even when over 20 killed.

The carnage inflicted by the US on Falluja in 2004 was one of the worst atrocities in the war on Iraq. Now another report indicates that the legacy of that attack is a dramatic increase in cancers and birth defects, with the finger of blame again pointing at the US Army's use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous weaponry.

A US soldier serving five life terms for raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her parents and sister, blames US Army dehumanisation of Iraqi civilians.

The war on Iraq continues not just through the presence and activities of US occupation forces and foreign mercenaries, but also through a series of punitive tools used against Iraq to ensure compliance with US wishes.

How many Iraqis have been killed in the seven years since the US-UK invasion? Credible calculations say 700,000, almost seven times the deaths estimated from the secret US military documents published by Wikileaks.

The Wikileaks revelations provide a further window into the destruction wrought upon Iraq by the war and occupation and show how Iraqi loss of life has been seriously understated and US and British cruelty grossly under-reported. But the documents still don't give a complete picture of the devastation that has been inflicted on Iraq and its people.

The Observer newspaper, was one of Tony Blair's media cheer-leaders in the run up to the Iraq war, Now it says the war was a "catastrophe."

The Wikileaks files contain a horrific dossier of cases where US troops killed innocent civilians at checkpoints, on Iraq's roads and during raids on people's homes.

Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said in November 2003, "We don't do body counts of other people." He was lying, as Wikileaks files show.

The Wikileaks revelations provide a further window into the death and destruction wrought upon Iraq. But, says Kamil Mahdi, they don't give a complete picture.

"Like any sovereign, independent nation," says President Obama, "Iraq is free to chart its own course." as the country sinks into mire of repression, corruption and instability.