EXTREME RISKS
Going through the daily video footage of the violence is one of the regular tasks of this job.
We only use a fraction of it in our reports. But there are reels of it every day.
Twisted wrecks, burnt flesh, screaming faces, lacerated bodies, smoke and flames.
The images so terribly familiar now, they blur into each other. Most of it is filmed by relentlessly brave Iraqi cameramen working for television news agencies.
Like most Western journalists here, I hardly ever travel to bomb sites now. The risks of foreign faces being seen at such places and times are extreme.
The risks are little different for local cameramen. But they are often the only eyes on this part of the Iraq war.
Many have died on the job over the past four years. And it is Iraqis who make up the vast majority of the 146 media workers killed covering this conflict, the costliest for the media ever.
Somehow they keep coming back with pictures to show what has happened.
Until last Saturday, that is - from the site of the worst single bombing since 2003.
More than 130 people were killed, another 300 plus wounded when a ton of explosives was detonated in the heart of the old Sadriya market of central Baghdad.
I've been there several times in the past and always remember it thronged with people around the stalls and shops - that and the fact this is a mainly Shia area are the reasons it was hit.
It soon became clear this was an enormous blast - the casualty figures our Iraqi producers were getting from police and hospitals jumping every few minutes.
But with incidents like this we usually see pictures from the scene within an hour of the first reports.
This time, it took longer. And the only footage was from the hospitals where the dead and wounded were taken. Only the next day did we see images of the shattered market itself.
MOB ATTACK
Next day, I spent some time with a few of the regulars who cover the violence every day, including one who was at the Sadriya market, and asked them what it's like trying to work in Baghdad now.
They asked that I neither identify them or their employers. So the names below are invented.
"It was the worst thing I've ever seen, the worst explosion" said Muhammad. "Everyone was hysterical, shouting, screaming."
"I waited 20 minutes before I got my camera out", he said. "I only use this small camera now," he added, pointing to a mini-DV camera on the table. The big, professional cameras are now mostly left in the office.
He's been working as a cameraman ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"But as soon as I brought it out, the crowd attacked me and started beating me."
"They accused me of being one of the terrorists." If Iraqi soldiers hadn't intervened, "I would have been dead for sure."
As he left Sadriya market, he had been threatened by people he believes were from one of the Shia militias.
But next day, he was back at work - filming the aftermath of a roadside bombing in a Sunni neighbourhood. "This is my job", he said.
HAPPY TO SURVIVE
It has got harder and harder though, particularly since the bombing of the holy Shia shrine in Samarra last February - the trigger for the past year's sectarian bloodletting between the majority Shias and minority Sunnis.
"At the start of the day, feel like I am already dead. If I get to the end I am happy"
"When you get to a place, the people, the police, they don't care if you are a journalist. They want to know what sect you are from"
"Sometimes the people attack us, sometimes the police and army. Sometimes the Americans," he said. He was wounded two years ago and a colleague was killed when they were fired on by a US patrol.
As a result, cameramen now spend less and less time at any site and often stay further back than before. "It's 100% dangerous," Ali says with a nervous laugh.
But despite the rising threat, he doesn't want to stop. "We have to show what is happening in Iraq now."
"Every day I survive is a bonus," he said.
"At the start of the day, I feel like I am already dead. If I get to the end I am happy."
DEADLY HARVEST
"All you report on is the violence." That is a criticism we've long heard of BBC coverage of Iraq.
Not true, we say.
Another charge is that we ignore the fact that many areas outside Baghdad are relatively peaceful.
That appears to be true, although it is very hard to verify because in many smaller towns and cities there are no journalists or other independent witnesses to check.
But insecurity in the capital affects the whole country. Why else would the Americans and Iraqi government be focusing so much effort on it now?
There are several other arguments here.
First, if there has been one bloodily learned lesson of this war, security is the priority above all.
Not democracy, not elections, not new governments nor hospitals or clinics. These only function properly when there is security.
It is a message we hear from Iraqis across the country, louder than ever now as the situation has deteriorated.
History books of the future will not focus on the number of hospitals, schools and police stations built since the US and British invasion - but the battles, the insurgency, the sectarian bloodletting and perhaps eventually, peace and reconciliation talks.
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
So there is no escape for us. If we are to cover Iraq properly, the violence is bound to dominate.
On the other hand, you could argue we don't do a very good job at it.
There is an average of 800-900 violent incidents reported each week - shootings, kidnappings, mortar and rocket attacks, roadside bombs, car bombings.
We can only report on a handful of these. So inevitably, the focus often ends up being on the biggest attacks.
It's something we're not always comfortable with in the bureau. We had the dilemma again with the weekend attack on the Sadriya market, when the news agencies billed it as the worst single bombing since the invasion.
It was - from one blast. But in November 2006 more than 200 people died and another 400 were injured in an attack in Baghdad's Sadr City.
It was a single incident, but it involved several bombs and mortars.
In other words, through a common journalistic device - first, worst, biggest - there is a risk of obscuring the wider truth of the level of violence.
In the weeks before the Sadriya attack, there had been several other massive car bombings each one of which killed more than 70 people , as well as the usual harvest of death squad victims dumped around the city.
The bombers' aim is to cause maximum casualties, so in some ways the figure they achieve each time doesn't matter.
It's the fact that these incidents keep happening and the apparent inability of the authorities to stop them that is probably more important.
But with so much bloodshed we increasingly have no choice but to use such language to focus attention on what is happening.
Previous Baghdad diaries:
Technology at war
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