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In 2004 and 2006, two surveys in The Lancet estimated that the Iraq war had killed far more civilians than officials acknowledged. The fierce reaction to them became a case study in how wars are counted.
A former Iraqi air force general wrote that Saddam Hussein had flown his weapons of mass destruction to Syria before the 2003 invasion. The claim sold books; the evidence never materialised.
In 2011 an Iraqi court sentenced fifteen men to death for the massacre of dozens of people at a wedding during the sectarian war. The case illustrated both the scale of the violence and the shortcomings of Iraqi justice.
Iraq's state cement makers profited from the post-war construction boom. Their story shows both the potential and the problems of Iraq's state-owned industry.