Any war in Iraq will be radically different to the 1991 Gulf War. Reporter Roger Williams examines the grim human cost civilians in the country could have to pay.

WHEN George Bush complained "it's like watching a re-run of a bad movie" he was talking about Saddam Hussein's behaviour.

But his comments could equally be applied to many people's expectations of the approaching war with Iraq.

Some are expecting to tune into Gulf War II -- a short desert war, satellite-guided bombs unerringly finding their targets and plenty of spectacular explosions all without any blood and gore to put them off their dinners. War for the PlayStation generation.

The slick CNN view of the 1991 conflict did not show the whole picture. Footage released was controlled by the Pentagon to show successes and conceal the horror movie on the ground.

And critical differences this time round will mean the Blair-Bush Project is even more terrifying for the Iraqi people.

Most fighting in the last Gulf War took place in open desert, bombs pouring down on sitting duck soldiers far from population centres.

But this will be an urban war and Iraqi civilians, including the children under 14 who make up half the population, will be in the front line.

US defence chiefs have already announced plans to unleash 800 cruise missiles -- more than TWICE the number fired in the whole 1991 War -- on Iraq in the first few days of an attack before sending in the B-52s to begin saturation bombing.

This is a tactic known as Shock and Awe and it's a world away from so-called precision bombardments. Avoiding civilian casualties is no longer on the agenda. The priority, as in Afghanistan, is to protect pilots by mounting high-altitude raids which reduce whole areas to rubble.

Quite simply the US-led forces want to make sure there's as little as possible of Baghdad, and other major population centres, left before they risk so much as a single ground troop.

Labour MP George Galloway, a strident critic of the Government's policy towards Iraq, draws an analogy with the Allied destruction of Dresden in 1945 which killed around 50,000.

He told the Bolton Evening News: "The carpet bombing will be devastating. This will essentially be another Dresden of Iraqi towns and cities so that when Iraq is invaded there will be as few people as possible left to resist."

The figures are mind-boggling. As respected a body as The World Health Organisation (WHO) predicts a civilian casualty toll in Iraq of half a million.

All the talk in the build-up to war has been of "taking out" Saddam Hussein and liberating the oppressed Iraqi people.

But WHO projections paint a disturbing picture of what this "liberation" will mean for the ordinary population.

The organisation estimate 100,000 wounded and 400,000 hit by disease, with cholera and dysentry taking hold as water and sewage supplies are targeted and food supplies disrupted.

Other independent experts put the likely death toll in Baghdad alone at 50,000.

Hundreds of thousands more will be driven from their homes, many fleeing to other countries. Trevor Rowe, chief spokesman for the UN World programme, says the number of refugees could "easily be in millions".

Iraq is already a country on its knees -- partly the result of Saddam Hussein's repressive policies, partly the product of crippling UN sanctions which have hurt the very people they were supposed to help.

According to UNICEF, almost one third of children in central and southern Iraq are malnourished. Some 60 per cent of the population depend on UN rations to survive.

But aid agencies have warned any disruption to this fragile lifeline, such as roads being bombed, will create a humanitarian disaster.

Decent people will suffer. Those who've actually been to Iraq insist the image of Iraqi people fed to us by television footage, of fanatical flag burners chanting anti-Western slogans, is well wide of the mark.

BBC foreign editor John Simpson described in his memoirs how the protests we see are often orchestrated by the regime, with fearful participants forcibly rounded up, handed flags and banners and thrust in front of TV cameras.

Channel Four reporter Jon Snow, in Baghdad covering the current crisis, was amazed how friendly everyone was towards him.

Watching their reports brought to mind an encounter I had with an Iraqi at a bus station in neighbouring Jordan.

"Where are you from," he asked me.

"Britain," I replied.

"I am from Iraq," he said sternly. "We are enemies."

When he saw my anxious expression he clapped me on the back and broke out into a warm gap-toothed grin. "Only joking," he laughed. "We are not enemies. It is between governments."

That sums up an attitude you hear time and again in the Middle East. But when I hear what is about to be done in our government's name, I wonder whether people here make a similar distinction. As George Galloway puts it: "The idea of helping people by killing them was an absurdity we thought had gone out of fashion with Vietnam."

No one denies that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant. The war being proposed will ask the Iraqi people to pay an enormous price for his overthrow.

Whether Iraq poses a genuine threat to our national security is something that will be debated over the coming days.

But before those sanitised images of the conflict - shorn of the blood and tears flowing off-camera - start beaming into our living rooms, we have to ask ourselves if we agree to an attack taking place in our names.

If after a searching examination the conclusion is reached that the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqis are worth sacrificing, then we must approach this war with heavy hearts.

Yet we must be absolutely certain, and we must be under no illusion that this will be a PlayStation conflict. Otherwise it could become a horror which will haunt our consciences for years.

READY FOR WAR: George Bush

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