"How is it going?" asks Private Smith, a young US soldier sporting fancy surfer sunglasses and with a mouthful of gum as he checks a dozen cars queuing up to get into Iraq.

"Just be careful for bandits and have a safe trip," he tells drivers as his colleague, Private Asfeld, whose face is equally burnt by Iraq's scorching sun, waves good-bye to travellers.

This border passage, one of the great crossroads of the Arab world, is now under complete American control with no Iraqi presence in sight.

The US soldiers, backed by armored vehicles and jeeps, stand by a faceless portrait of the toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while an Iraqi flag in shreds barely floats over the desert.

A few meters away, two statues of the former dictator still stand tall. One, a Saddam made out of bronze rides a horse with four tanks shells adorning the pedestal.

But there are no flesh and blood Iraqi officials to be seen. The watchtowers and many customs buildings are empty and covered in yellow sand like a ghost town in a Western movie.

US army convoys can be spotted on the next 550 kilometers (330 miles) to the Iraqi capital, a long and well-maintained highway cutting through Iraq's barren western desert.

A few jeeps whisking away journalists to Baghdad and Iraqi families back home are speeding along the highway.

Gas stations are now empty on most of the route as they have not been restocked in weeks. Iraqi drivers say the price of oil has increased fivefold from before the war, when it was still fixed by the state.

During the three-week-long US-led strke on Iraq, little resistance was found in Iraq's sparsely-populated western desert.

A few charred cars litter the roadside and a bridge nearby is in ruins. Sandbags, once protecting makeshift Iraqi military positions, are left intact as if quickly deserted by Saddam's soldiers.

Nearing Baghdad, the landscape takes on greener hues but is also scarred by heavy bombings and looting.

A dozen Iraqi tanks, some blown up and some simply abandoned, lie on the roadside, half-standing government buildings and military bases bear the traces of shelling.

By the shadow of thick palm trees, US soldiers are resting in the back of their armored vehicles while others are lying atop of mound of earth, pointing their machine guns at some target, most likely training.

In Baghdad's impoverished Abu Ghraib suburb, hordes of teenagers and young men fire up their Kalashnikovs as armed-to-the-teeth US soldiers patrol the crowded streets unperturbed by the apparent state of lawlessness.

Piles of trash rot under the blazing sun, open sewers flood the streets, traffic is dense and disorganized in the absence of functioning lights.

Looters are already peddling their bounty to less fortunate but law-abiding fellow-citizens.

SPACE.WIRE