In a 28-page report from Amnesty International, the human rights organization sums up the situation as carnage and despair in Iraq:

Armed groups, including those opposed to the Iraqi government and the US-led Multi-National Force (MNF), have been responsible for indiscriminate bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings and torture.

Since early 2006, violence has intensified and become more sectarian, with Sunni and Shi'a armed groups targeting followers of opposite faiths and driving whole communities out of mixed neighbourhoods. This has contributed to the displacement of over four million people. Two million of these are now refugees in Syria and Jordan.

Civilians are also at risk from MNF and Iraqi security forces, with many killed by excessive force and tens of thousands detained without charge or trial. The death penalty was reintroduced in 2004 and hundreds of people have been sentenced to death. At least 33 people were executed in 2007, many after unfair trials.

With the rise of fundamentalist religious groups, conditions for women have also worsened. Many have been forced to wear Islamic dress or targeted for abduction, rape or killing. A survey conducted by the World Heath Organization (WHO) in 2006/2007 in Iraq found that 21.2 percent of Iraqi women had experienced physical violence.

The situation in Iraq has not been helped by the Iraqi government's failure to investigate effectively the many incidents of human rights abuse - whether committed by security forces or militia groups - and to bring those responsible to justice.

For the civilian Iraqis the endemic violence is only one of the many horrors of daily life. Many Iraqis live in poverty, getting by on less than one dollar a day. But perhaps most alarming in the entire situation is the lack of clean water.

Continues Amnesty:

Economic conditions also remain very poor, with most Iraqis suffering from lack of food, shelter, water, sanitation, education, healthcare and employment. Oxfam reported in July 2007 that 70 percent of Iraqis lacked access to safe drinking water and 43 percent were living on the equivalent of less than a dollar per day. Eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance, with children the worst hit. Child malnutrition rates have increased from 19 percent during the period from 1991-2003, when international sanctions were imposed on the country under Saddam Hussein, to 28 percent in 2007.

The British TV network Channel 4 too has examined the brutal reality of life inside post-invasion Iraq in several features, airing in the UK. The network has deployed regional video journalists and specialist cameramen into areas from where few Western journalists can report. A film by Jon Snow forms part of the "Happy Birthday Iraq" season marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion.

Reports Channel 4 this "happy birthday":

footage reveals how the splintering of Iraq has allowed warlords and militias to control individual areas. [We meet] Abu Abed, the commander of one such militia protecting the Sunni Ameriya district of Baghdad. The Americans have celebrated the exploits of his "Awakening Council" which united them in the fight against Al Qaeda, as emblematic of the success of the surge. But his views on the Shia offer a chilling prospect for the future of Iraq: "Because Iraq is a tribal country the killing is not forgotten even after years. You kill my brother and I know you killed him then I will follow you for a hundred years. You cannot forget. Revenge in the Arab tradition is a very old habit."

The view from an opposing Shia militia is no more encouraging. Abu Hassan, a committed Sadrist, the party protected by the powerful Shia Mahdi army labels the Awakening Council a "bunch of killers", arguing they kill for money and their loyalty is dependent on America's funding.

The film reveals how our obsession with the security situation in Iraq masks the true hardships of daily life. Saad Jawaad, victim of a recent bomb in the Karrada district of Baghdad, tells Snow that state healthcare has all but collapsed. He describes being turned away from his hospital which now only treats wealthy private patients.

Iraq was once home to the largest secular middle class in the Middle East. Human rights activist Basma Al Khatib describes its disintegration to Snow - the collapse of industry, the closure of universities and the control of business centres by militias. Basma reveals just how far the standard of living has regressed: "In the eighties we discarded oil fuel heaters, but now it's life-saving because you can survive with them... You dig your well in case there is no water. You have your own generators; you have your own stock of fuel. You have to have a stock of food for three months, especially if you have kids... We don't have hot water... You do worry about your wife giving birth after 11 O'clock in labour, because you cannot take her to hospital, so most of the pregnant women now schedule a caesarean."

The film examines the appalling, but forgotten plight of Iraq's millions of widows. Najah Abbas speaks for the thousands of women whose husbands have been killed, telling Snow how impossible her life has become following the death of her husband - how she feels abandoned by the Government and has no-one to turn to.

Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad tells Jon that the newly-created central government in the Greenzone is in reality a paper fiction, bearing no relation to the lives of ordinary Iraqis: "The parliament in Baghdad, for the average Iraqi person is a distant planet, somewhere else. People talk in the Parliament about issues that don't really touch the life of the Iraqi people... When we talk about an Iraqi Government, again, it's a... it's a kind of a mistake, it's a kind of a wrong word.".

After five years our expectations for Iraq have sunk so low that any success is measured purely by the body count. A day with only few peple killed is a good day.

"In attempting to quantify what's happened here in the last five years there's been a grim obsession with body counts - how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, but the abiding casualty is the quality of life of the average Iraqi... This is a society that has seen its middle classes flee, has witnessed the execution of Saddam, but itself has been beheaded."

This madness must end. This "happy birthday" in Iraq five years on is cause alone to remember why we, as Democrats, simply must win the White House in November.