Security forces patrolling the streets and bodyguards traveling in convoys to protect senior officials have their fingers on the trigger wherever they are.

As they move, they shout at drivers to park their vehicles on the side of the road immediately else they will pull the trigger and shoot to kill.

Iraqi officials carefully choose their guards and try to ensure that most of them are close relatives or at least from the same tribe.

Passing at dizzy speed, they have no intention even to inspect whether the occupants of the vehicle they shoot at for disobeying their usually unclear orders are injured or killed.

Nobody knows exactly how may innocent Iraqis have been wounded or murdered in this way. One thing Iraqis are sure of is that despite the killing no official or bodyguard has ever been brought to justice.

Iraqi soldiers and guards are not the only ones who are ready to shoot and kill at random.

Most probably they have learned this lesson from their trainers, U.S. occupation troops.

The problem with the U.S. troops in the country is that they do not speak our language; therefore they rely on body language and writing to bring their message home.

Their tanks and armored personnel carriers – U.S. troops’ only means of transport in Baghdad and other cities’ congested streets – bear signs in Arabic and English warning drivers that they risk certain death if they approached.

As nearly 70% of Iraqis are illiterate, you can imagine how many drivers mistakenly approach their certain death as U.S. troops’ laser guided guns never miss their targets.

The problem is exacerbated at night when U.S. troops expect illiterate Iraqis to be able to read their signs. The only winner, of course, is their lethal laser-guided guns with the ability to “read” even at night.

Again how many innocent Iraqis have died because they unknowingly came close to U.S. vehicles nobody knows but the figure must be high and on the rise.

The problem, here, as with Iraqi guards and forces, is that U.S. troops do not stop to take care of the victims. Iraqi drivers and passengers, who happen to be nearby, dismount to help them.

Once they gather around the victims, they curse the U.S. and the Iraqi government which has dismally failed to protect them.