Each day for the eight days I and a handful of other journalists were allowed to stay in Iraq we were taken on guided tours to see civilian casualties. That is why we were there, as far as the government was concerned. At the beginning of the war, Saddam Hussein’s propaganda machine was telling his people, “We’re inflicting heavy casualties. We’re capturing pilots. We’re winning this thing.” But after the second week, they began a new phrase: “Poor us. We’re being hit. We’re a weak country against a superpower. “The tack seemed designed as much to play on public opinion in the West as to foster domestic support for the regime. In Iraq, the results were mixed. The people, who see the war virtually every day, are sorting out the facts for themselves.

There is little doubt that civilian casualties are mounting. Private vehicles are hit if they happen to be near military convoys, and sometimes if they are not. Bridges are targeted in growing numbers. In Al-Nasiriya, a crossroads northwest of Basra and the site of a major air base, the local governor reports as many as 20 bombing raids a day. In an attack on a bridge on Feb. 4, the Iraqis say 47 people were confirmed killed, and many more may have drowned or been buried in the rubble beneath the water.

There is anger at the West. When we tried to cross a makeshift bridge at Al-Nasiriya a crowd cursed us as foreigners. But remarkably, many Iraqis are reluctant to blame the Americans for civilian deaths. Instead, some have convinced themselves that Israelis are joining in the bombing raids to avenge Scud attacks in Tel Aviv. The first night I was in Iraq on this trip the car I was in crashed and, with two companions, I was stranded by the road. A group of soldiers picked us up. Initially they mistook me for a Western pilot. Yet even then, there was little hostility, and when they determined that I was a journalist, they drove us 500 miles to Baghdad and bought us breakfast.

There is also anger with Saddam, and even where there is not, there appears to be little fervor. Unlike the pro-Saddam partisans in Jordan or other Arab countries these people actually have to put up with the effects of the war. They’re seeing their country destroyed. I met no Iraqis who spoke of the fight as a struggle for Palestine or Arab glory. People realize the fight is for Kuwait, and many have begun to wonder why. Twice, through contacts made in previous trips, I met young men who were dodging the draft. Even an Iraqi who is close to the government said bitterly, “This is not our war. This is Saddam’s war. He’s put us back 40 years.”

Saddam may be impervious to such sentiments. It is doubtful he sees firsthand the suffering that reporters are shown, more doubtful still that anyone tells him of discontent.

In Al-Nasiriya’s Saddam Hospital last week, provincial Gov. Taher Yassin Hussein took us on a tour of the day’s carnage. As he stopped a stretcher and held up the wounded arm of a little girl for the cameras to record, he launched into the regime’s official line. “This is one of the criminal acts committed by Bush,” he proclaimed. “Even unfeeling animals would have to take pity on this.” A doctor brought out the corpse of another child: Ahmed Qasem, 10, still dressed in the red track suit we had seen in the morning. “Bush is mistaken if he thinks we will desert our beloved leader,” said the governor. “Our people shout, ‘As long as our president is safe, we are all right’.” Many Iraqis already know better.