If you read the statistics about reduced violence in Iraq and increased influence of the Iraqi government, it is possible to conclude that there may yet be a happy ending for the American occupation.

If you read "Collateral Damage" by Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and freelance writer Laila Al-Arian (Nation Books: $22.95), you will conclude the battle is already lost and that it doesn't make much difference what the outcome of future skirmishes might be.

The mere fact of a prolonged occupation leads to atrocities on the part of the beleaguered occupiers, Hedges asserts. A military occupation leads to a crisis of faith on the part of the occupiers.

"Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke dangerous. The fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the real enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians, who are seen to support the insurgents."

This is not an anti-American soldier book. Hedges and Al-Arian note time and time again that American soldiers face horrible attacks by Iraqi insurgents. The point is not that soldiers are bad; the point is that occupation leads to atrocities.

Insurgents, for example, like to attack truck convoys, ferrying freight from one part of Iraq to another. The best way to attack a convoy is to get it to stop. The best way to minimize danger to a convoy is to keep it moving, Hedges explains.

He quotes a Sgt. Geoffrey Millard reporting the instructions he received about escorting a convoy: "The military theory behind it is you don't put American lives in danger by stopping a whole convoy for one kid. You run the kid over."

Many, many Iraqis have been killed because they got too close to American-protected truck convoys, Hedges says. Sometimes, the trucks were conveying nothing more important to the war effort than cases of soda.

Other Iraqis die at quickly improvised checkpoints. Others die because genuine insurgents fire on Americans, who return the fire and hit innocent bystanders.

This is a profoundly disturbing book; disturbing in part because Hedges offers no solutions to the problems caused by the war. The book is only 117 pages long and, no matter what your position on the war, it is worth reading and contemplating.