"I think it would require an enormous amount of imagination to believe that someone went to the trouble of composing a forged document in Arabic and then planting it in a file of patently authentic documents and burying it in a darkened room on the off-chance that a British journalist might happen upon it and might bother to translate it."

One of the reasons that British politics is often more entertaining than the American version is that they are so much more accomplished at insulting each other than Americans. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

Update: Andrew Sullivan is all over this like hair on a dog. That should focus some American eyes on the story.

But unless the anti-war forces believe Saddam's fires should be allowed to burn out of control indefinitely, they must presumably have an idea of which outfit should have got the contract instead of Boots and Coots. I think we can be sure that the contract would not have gone to some windmill-power concern run by Naomi Klein or the anti-Starbucks Seattle coalition, in the hope of just blowing out the flames or of extinguishing them with Buddhist mantras.

...And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, bound and bare,
The lone and level sands strech far away.

3:55 p.m.: Thursday morning, President Bush greeted the people of Iraq on their TV screens. "You are a good and gifted people," he told them as Arabic script appeared below his face. I don't know Arabic, but I'm sure the translation didn't convey what Bush means by "gifted." He doesn't mean exceptional. He means ethnic.

Coalition forces again fought “battle-lite”. The application of shock-and-awe to Caen and Rouen and the blasting of infrastructure targets round Paris devastated French morale. A re-enactment of Operation Overlord saw the 21st Army Group reform in Hampshire and storm ashore at Normandy’s Omaha and Utah beaches. Veteran units of the 101st Airborne were allowed to seize Pegasus Bridge, again. The Marine Corps had Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks “embedded”.

[t]onight I had dinner with a pal who interviewed Radovan Karadzic back in 1992, before the Bosnian slaughter reached epic proportions. “I could have grabbed his gun and shot him right there,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if I should have.” Do you think such a thought might cross the mind of Yoko Ono and her pals, as they spend a hilarious eight-hour session yukking it up with El Jefe?

We can’t yet tell how many Iraqi civilians had to die, but we can say with certainty that their deaths were the responsibility of a cruel and vicious regime, which put them in harm’s way as its only military and political asset, and which sent black-shirted Saddam Youth out in marauding gangs to intensify the death agony of the despotism.

That's Hitchens again, and of course. I've already seen a couple of comments about his Slate piece to the effect that it's a bit over the top. When you consider who he's aiming at, I can't agree. The anti-war far left went so far over the top in this affair that they've set a new standard. I for one will be happy if they keep quiet now for awhile - there are more important and interesting things going on.

From Mrs Muriel Syed

Sir, Well, we certainly “rocked the world” of little Ali Ismail Abbas, did we not?

As a mother and grandmother it is my belief that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq, nothing at all is worth his suffering, nor that of hundreds of children like him in Iraq.

If the Iraqi regime had to be changed there had to be another way.

Yours faithfully,
MURIEL SYED,
Oaklands, 332 Burnley Road,
Holme-in-Cliviger, Burnley BB10 4ST.
April 10.

Simply put, the number of innocent people who are dead because we ousted Saddam is dwarfed by the number of innocent people who are dead because we didn't. The use of American force is on one side of the ledger, and mass killing is on the other. Trends in military and media technology make this dilemma increasingly likely where belligerent murderers rule. You can keep your hands clean, or you can keep many more people alive. It's up to you.

“YANKEE bastard,” yelled the young British peacenik at the first American tank to roll up to the Palestine Hotel. “Go home.”

She picked a man who had waited for 576 days to give his answer. Marine First Lieutenant Tim McLaughlin leant from the turret of his Abrams tank — nickamed “Satan’s Right Hand” — and screamed back: “I was at the Pentagon September 11. My co-workers died. I don’t give a f***.”

Baghdad :: Andrew Gilligan :: 1242GMT

We always wondered whether the American tanks would roll up in front of our live cameras in time for the American morning TV shows, and they just about have. Quarter to nine in the morning on the East Coast, Quarter to six on the West Coast, so it is more or less picture-perfect timing for the Americans.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

East of Baghdad :: David Willis :: 1231GMT

US Marines are moving into the centre from the suburbs. They're coming in from the east through an area called Saddam City where I am now. This is a Shiite area, much of it made up of slums. Now these are not natural allies of Saddam Hussein in the first place, so their response to the presence of US Marines is probably to be expected.

Baghdad :: Paul Wood :: 1127 GMT

The Americans are able to move with ease around the city now - who knows, maybe in a minute you may see them over my shoulder.

However America isn't really popular here. Today they might be cheered tomorrow it might be a different story.

Jonathan Marcus, the BBC’s correspondent in Qatar, was being interviewed by a troubled World Service anchor, "Jonathan, who should we believe? The Americans? Or Saddam?"

It is the ability of British troops to mix with locals that helps earn trust. Unlike the Americans our lads are encouraged to go out on the streets, absorb the local culture and strike up conversation with locals.

Hitchens gladly obliged, and told Yacoub he didn't want them anyway, since they didn't seem to get him anywhere. (He did express regret that he had to relinquish the one that said "unilateral.") Playing Powell to Hitchens's Rumsfeld, I got off the bus, and tried to smooth things over with Yacoub, who had had a long day himself.

After cooling off, Yacoub decided to make nice, somewhat, by wordlessly giving Hitchens back his press passes. But Hitchens, still smarting from having his freedoms trampled, accepted the American one, and handed the Kuwaiti one back. Insulted and red in the face, Yacoub screamed, "I will use my power! You will leave Kuwait tonight!" (Hitchens didn't get tossed that night--thanks to connections he had above Yacoub's pay grade).

In a show of collegiality that typifies the press corps these days, another reporter snapped at Hitchens, taking management's side. "And you wonder why people think we're arrogant and rude," he thundered.

"They don't have to wonder in my case," Hitchens calmly replied.

I exited the bus, and joined Hitchens outside, where as usual, he was having a smoke. I tried to console him, but he didn't seem to need it. "Remember my golden rule," he said defiantly. "Do something every day against Bastards HQ."

In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam 's regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it?

Excuse me while I laugh.

In the fog of war we're forced to speculate: Either Saddam is an extremely responsible tyrant. Or - he simply does not possess weapons of mass destruction. Either way, regardless of what happens next, Iraq comes out of the argument smelling sweeter than the US government.

There is no friendly or neutral country to serve as a rearguard, as there is in the case of Jordan and Kuwait, because the fools who run today's Turkey couldn't even be bribed to act in their own self-interest.

Baghdad has been bombarded before - in 1991 and 1998 - but nothing like this.

The Americans may hope they will be welcomed as liberators, and that the Iraqi regime is not popular.

But it is the Americans who are not popular here.

It's a culmination of 12 years of crushing sanctions, two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in which the United States has been seen as supporting the Israeli side, and because it's widely believed that the US has come to Iraq to steal its oil.

These are of course opinions found in any Arab capital in any Arab country anywhere in the Middle East.

But they are felt in Iraq just the same.

And this is the problem the Americans face.

If it was the Swedish army coming here, the reaction might be different.

Workers at a marriage agency in Sverdlovsk Oblast have noted a decline in the interest of local women in U.S. bridegrooms, Novyi region reported on 26 March. Valentina Polisyuk, proprietor of the International Friendship Society, attributes the decline not to recent U.S. foreign-policy moves, but to a visit by a group of U.S. men to Yekaterinburg last year. According to Polisyuk, many of her clients found the U.S. men to be "boring, cold martians with dead eyes."

Iraqi sports are worse today than ever. Our teams used to win. There was much pride in playing for your country. But Uday never understood pride, only fear. He was never an athlete. He thought he could use his father's sadistic approach to improve performance. He has failed.