The fear is that other companies may follow Contrack’s example, or decline to tender for work, further imperilling the prospects for reconstruction.For Mr Bush ­ described by one visitor to the Oval Office as “distraught” by the carnage ­ the onrush of events could not happen at a worse time. At his press conference a day before the attack, he admitted the insurgency was “having an effect”, but vowed the elections would go ahead on schedule. How, The New York Times asked yesterday, “can the United States ­ with the help of Iraqi security forces whose performance has been uneven at best ­ assure the safety of Iraqis who go to the polls on January 30 when it cannot keep its own troops safe on their own base?” Meanwhile a big US contractor has pulled out of the $20bn (£12bn) reconstruction effort. According to The Los Angeles Times, Contrack International, which heads a partnership that won a $325m contract, one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded this year, has stopped work on the project because of “prohibitive” security costs.

The deal is the largest so far in Iraq to fall victim to the insurgency. But the incident, the deadliest single strike at a US facility during the 20-month occupation, is bound to increase doubts about the entire Iraq mission. Even before the attack, an unprecedented 56 per cent of Americans felt the invasion had been a mistake, a poll this week found.Now even sharper questions are being posed. The full impact of the attack began to sink in yesterday as television showed the first sombre pictures of some of the dozens of Mosul wounded being carried off a military transport plane at the US Air Force base at Ramstein, Germany.

Eight of the injured are said to be in critical condition, raising fears that the death toll may rise further.The official response here is that the US will not be cowed into postponing next month’s scheduled elections ­ still less into a premature exit from Iraq. ABC Television News reported that investigators had discovered remains of a torso and a backpack that could have belonged to the person who detonated the bomb, as well as shrapnel of a type found in other suicide bombings. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that after investigations into Tuesday’s blast in a mess tent at Forward Operating Base Marez, evidence pointed to it being an inside job. “It looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker,” General Myers said.

Officials initially suspected a rocket or mortar strike had been launched by insurgents outside the base.The Pentagon finding tallies with the claim of an Islamic radical group, the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, that the attack was an act of “martyrdom”. A leading American contractor has pulled out of a major Iraqi reconstruction project, the latest sign of how the ever-increasing violence in Iraq threatens to overwhelm America’s plans to democratise and rebuild the country. The New York Post headlined its review “Crashing Chandelier, Crashing Bore” and its critic thought the film “campy, overdecorated, deracinated and interminable”. Its “dirgelike anthems are repeated endlessly until they drill into your skull like a root canal,” he added.Butler, described as “an obscure Scottish actor best known for the second Lara Croft bomb” is “not much of a singer or an actor” while Minnie Driver as the diva Carlotta is “annoying”.

The reviewer considered the film’s only redeeming feature to be the opera-trained actress Emmy Rossum.The Los Angeles Times saidPhantom had been “filmed, cast and art-directed to the point of collapse” and tended “to drift into a semi-conscious fog … as through purposefully trying to lose us in all the murkiness and rococo design”.Daily Variety, the trade newspaper of the film industry, was more circumspect, confining itself to the critical comment: “Unlike Chicago, the film lacks the stars and Broadway pizzazz needed to attract a significant new audience.”. It has taken Andrew Lloyd Webber 16 years to bring his stage musical hit Phantom Of The Opera to the screen, but according to American critics, he need not have bothered.
The £50m extravaganza, financed mainly by Lloyd Webber, stars the Scottish actor Gerard Butler in the title role and has attracted indifferent to scathing reviews. Mr Savido, who wanted to protest against the Iraq war, has put the work up for sale on eBay.
He plans to give the proceeds to parents of soldiers in Iraq so they can send them equipment the troops say is in short supply..