THE US: For months after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the New York Times carried poignant obituaries of those killed.
Now the newspaper is doing something similar. Almost every day it publishes a box headed "Names of the Dead", which lists details of the latest soldiers killed in Iraq. Yesterday the box had four names supplied by the Department of Defence: Specialist Andrew Chris of California, Richard Orengo of Puerto Rico, Timothy Conneway of Alabama, and Thomas Sotelo of Texas.
The effect on the US public of the drip-drip of US casualties - since President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1st more than 70 US and British coalition troops have been killed in attacks and accidents - has eroded the once overwhelming confidence among Americans in the war effort.
This became evident in a Gallup poll published yesterday, showing that by last weekend only 56 per cent believed the effort was still well on track; whereas as recently as May, some 86 per cent of people felt that things were going well for US forces.
The percentage of Americans who thought it was worth going to war has declined from 73 per cent in April to 56 per cent, while the proportion of those who disagreed with the US-led invasion of Iraq has gone up from 23 per cent to 42 per cent.
The deteriorating situation in Iraq has also eroded confidence in the leadership of Mr Bush, according to the poll published by CNN and USA Today, though he still enjoys the support of most Americans.
Mr Bush is rated "honest and trustworthy" by 65 per cent, down from 73 per cent in April. His job rating has fallen from 71 per cent in April to 61 per cent. Some 57 agreed he "cares about the needs of people like you", down eight points from April.
Most Americans still give Mr Bush the benefit of the doubt on claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Six in 10 people said the administration had not deliberately misled the country. However, 37 per said said they had been deliberately deceived, up from 31 per cent last month.
The percentage of Americans who believe weapons of mass destruction will be found has fallen from 84 per cent on March 30th to 53 per cent.
Of those who believe the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over, 25 per cent said they believed they had been lied to about banned weapons. Of those who felt it was worth a war, almost 33 per cent felt it helped protect US and world security.
Despite the reports of chaos in Iraq, a high proportion of Americans - 69 per cent - said it was worth having US troops in Iraq now, and a similar proportion expressed a high degree of confidence that the US would be able to rebuild the Iraq economy.