Striding through Basra in his bright white shirt yesterday, kissing babies and praising troops, this was as near as dammit a prime ministerial triumph. But all around him lies the wreckage - wild lawlessness, monstrous looting and killing, our own cluster bombs, no police, no water, no electricity and the dangerous boiling fury of people who find the white knights who came to save them look more like the horsemen of the Apocalypse right now. True, it's early days and the test is how Iraq fares two years from now. This is not the time for I-told-you-so gloating by those of us who opposed the war: it is better to live in hope that, out of the ruins, a better Iraq might still arise. But the utterly inept, penny-pinching US nation-building effort and their amnesia about Afghanistan makes that hope slender.

The righties have been crowing about the fact that "only" a hundred or so pieces are missing from the Iraqi National Museum, rather than the tens of thousands initially reported. Leaving aside the question of how Westerners might feel if "only" a hundred pieces were looted from, say, the Met or the Louvre, I'm kind of unclear as to how this exonerates the US. My understanding of the story is that various historians begged the military to guard the museum, and the military failed to do so (though they did go all out to keep the records at the Oil Ministry safe). The fact that the museum's curators managed to hide the majority of the museum's treasures in advance does not make the US indifference to that museum's looting any more ethically palatable. If a police officer stands by and watches a mugger shoot a victim and does nothing to stop it, he's still guilty of negligence even if the victim lives because he happened to be wearing a bulletproof vest.

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

The extraordinary admission, which is bound to stir the controversy in Washington and London about the murky motivations for war, comes in an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

...torched villages; macheted babies in the streets; stoned child warriors indulging in cannibalism and draping themselves with the entrails of their victims; (United Nations) peacekeepers—mostly Uruguayans—using their guns only to drive off waves of frantic civilians seeking refuge in their already overflowing compound; a quarter of a million people in frenzied flight from their homes ... Hundreds of thousands of Congolese have been killed in the fighting, and many more have died as a consequence of the displacement, disease, and hunger that attend it.

As Bunia burned, the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan—haunted by his failure to heed warnings of the impending genocide in Rwanda in 1994—sent a letter to the Security Council asking its members for a “rapid reaction force” to pacify the region. France, which is also tainted by complicity in the Rwandan slaughter, has said it can muster troops to maintain order until the U.N. can field a plausible force, but only on the condition that other nations join in. At least five governments have said they would consider contributing to a French-led operation. The Bush Administration has expressed support for the project but has refused to commit any troops to it.

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

And ironically enough, all of those wingnuts and chickenhawks - - the same people that were oh-so-concerned about Saddam's brutality -- can't bother themselves with caring about the suffering of the Uzbek people.

But just watch -- 10-20 years from now, when we suffer the inevitable blowback and have to go to war against Uzbekistan, those same wingnuts and chickenhawks will accuse the Left of "coddling" the Karimov dictatorship. We'll be "objectively pro- Karimov".

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.

The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.

"(Ali) said, first of all, thank you for the attention they're giving to him, but he hopes nobody from the children in the war they will suffer like what he suffer."

To which (CNN's) Ms. Phillips replied, apparently in all seriousness:

"Doctor, does he understand why this war took place? Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the meaning? Does he understand it?"

Pardon? Did I hear anything in the course of the entire war that so clearly illustrated the pathological insularity of the US media?

"Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the meaning?"
"Does he understand it?"

Amazingly, the doctor kept a straight face...

Out in the provinces the US army continues to arm and to pay the warlords who help them in their battle against al-Qaeda. Even as Hamid Karzai battles to establish his national army, he is being undermined by his allies. Hopelessly under-funded, without the security he pleads for, crippled even by his American backers, the Afghan President is perilously isolated. He, and Afghanistan, are being daily betrayed by Britain, America and the West.

Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys of the country.

None of the local and foreign researchers were willing to speak for the record, however, until their tallies are complete.

Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam.

The hallmark of the Bush approach to the economy is its absolute rigidity. On matters economic, Bush is a monomaniac with a bad idea, a doctor who prescribes the same all-purpose snake oil no matter what the ailment. And while Bush is not responsible for the post-boom bust in which America finds itself, his refusal to contemplate any remedy save his own for the economy is directly responsible for the increasing longevity and severity of the bust...

With the economy going nowhere but south, the administration has been obliged to come up with an explanation for the downturn that directs responsibility away from the White House. Until 9-11, the recession was Bill Clinton's fault; thereafter, it was Osama bin Laden's and, more recently, Saddam Hussein's

"Oh, for pity's sake," wailed Uncle Vernon. "Petunia! The neighbor's great dane made a mess in the garden again! Get Harry to come clean it up!" He turned back toward Harry and squinted his piggish eyes. "Oh, never mind," he said with a dismissive snuffle. "It is Harry."

Harry thought Uncle Vernon sounded rather displeased with the realisation. The gray-suited man stomped his way across the flowerbed, taking an intentionally roundabout path toward the gravel driveway and altering his stride in just such a way as to allow him to step directly on Harry's face as he passed.

"Ow!" Harry yelped as he pushed himself to his feet.

"Come along," bellowed Mr. Dursley, squeezing himself behind the wheel of his sedan. "Or you'll be blubberin' that you were late for your friend Hermione's funeral."

The U.S. military insists that DU presents essentially no danger to anyone, but also warns American troops (though not Iraqis) to steer clear of the stuff or handle it only with care and protective gear. Monitor journalist Scott Peterson visited a number of sites including the Ministry of Planning in downtown Baghdad, only 300 yards from the American occupation headquarters and sprayed by Warthog bullets. He found some places where the Monitor's Geiger counter registered radioactivity at 1900 times background levels.

In the space of a few weeks, awe at American power in war has been transformed into anger at American impotence in peace. A crime wave, increasingly the work of organized gangs far better armed than the skeleton Iraqi police forces, has kept citizens in a peculiar state of limbo, free yet fearful.

according to aid workers in the area...US forces have spray-painted the remains with graffiti and stolen kiln-baked bricks made millennia ago. As a result, the US military has put the archaeological treasure, which dates back 6,000 years, off-limits to its own troops. Any violations will be punishable in military courts.

The other day I asked former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton what he thought of our great victory over Iraq, and he said, "Mohammed Ali versus Mr. Rogers."

Saddam wasn't a threat to America — he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home. Meanwhile, true to form, the Bush team lost focus as soon as the TV coverage slackened off. The first result was an orgy of looting — including looting of nuclear waste dumps that, incredibly, we failed to secure. Dirty bombs, anyone? Now, according to an article in The New Republic, armed Iraqi factions are preparing for civil war.

Rest assured that once you wake up from the fantasy of the hype to the reality of the film, you'll feel like Neo in the original, when his pretend world fell away and he discovered he actually lived in a tiny pod with one tube in his mouth and another in his ass.

There really is no delicate way to put this: Britain helped the United States in the Iraq war and now we want our financial reward.Such words are not for the squeamish. They will feed the prejudices of the peaceniks and appal the sensibilities of the chattering classes.

Battles between looters and score-settling from the Saddam years have taken hold, fuelled by a security vacuum that owes much to a decision by Donald Rumsfeld, the American Defence Secretary, to invade and occupy Iraq with minimum troop numbers – two divisions short, say well- informed sources within the Allies' reconstruction team.

They are the by-product, too, of the failure of the Allies to coax the Baghdad police to return to work in sufficient numbers. Most of the Iraqi officers who have returned have yet to come out of their police stations.

"What is this stuff
That doth jiggle in the breeze
And smells like that which
I avoid when I walk in the stables?"

Inside a cavernous room at the Al Hak Mosque in the newly named Revolution City, roughly 400,000 manuscripts, biographies, religious works, and graduate-school theses are stacked to the 12-foot ceiling and gathering dust in the dry, 95-degree heat.

Reports of carjackings, assaults and forced evictions grew today, adding to an impression that recent improvements in security were evaporating. Fires burned anew in several Iraqi government buildings and looting resumed at one of former president Saddam Hussein's palaces. The sound of gunfire rattled during the night; many residents said they were keeping their children home from school during the day. Even traffic was affected, as drivers ignored rules in the absence of Iraqi police, only to crash and cause tie-ups.

Security in Baghdad, the top of everybody's list of priorities, including the Americans', is deteriorating. Gunfire is heard more often than it was two weeks ago, thieves drag drivers from their cars in broad daylight, and looters continue to steal whatever is left from public buildings in full view of passers by.

GOP officials had earlier threatened to send police after the missing Democrats. The would-be quorum- busters planned to leave the state to avoid being located by the Department of Public Safety or Texas Rangers, who could detain them and forcibly return them to the House floor, a source said.

Problems are "addressed"; voters are "engaged" in the "political process". Programmes are "rolled out". Services are "ring-fenced", "passported" and "delivered". Kindergartens have "core values", post offices have "mission statements" and ministers’ statements are part of a "narrative". People hate and distrust this kind of babble. To us it distances the world in which the ministers and officials live from the world we live in — a world which (we notice) media and political folk refer to as being "out there".

2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

The caretaker, Mohasin Hanja, 42, said he had washed out the empty containers with water, first pouring away the residue of yellow liquid that had been in one of the barrels. Yesterday a senior IAEA official said this was likely to be a residue of "yellow cake", the basic concentrated form of uranium oxide, from which uranium products are refined in the nuclear industry.

So the Bush administration ... concocted phony stories about Saddam’s imminent nuclear bomb. It is straining to find weapons of mass destruction that probably no longer exist. It finds the time, the money and the mental energy to stage a photo-op landing for the President aboard an aircraft carrier. But nobody in Washington thought of guarding the Iraqi nuclear materials that might truly pose a threat to us—until after the sites had been breached.

If we didn’t already know that our leaders are geniuses, we might start to wonder whether they’re idiots. The other unthinkable possibility is that the people telling us our leaders are geniuses may be idiots, too—and that we are idiots for believing them.

BAGHDAD, 7 May -- What appeared to be extensive and destructive looting in Baghdad's famed Museum of Antiquities was in fact the result of dedicated Iraqi citizens very hastily moving the treasures to secure storage vaults.

"With the U.S. forces amassing around the city, they worried about Saddam's forces looting the museums in the chaos of the impending battle," said the American investigator who discovered the truth. "There was a spontaneous rush of people swarming the museum to swiftly move the remaining unsecured pieces into the vaults. It was messy, some glass cases were smashed in their desperate heroic enthusiasm, but now we know the truth. Only 38 pieces are missing, which were more likely stolen by Saddam and his cronies before the war."...

...After decades under the criminal regime of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqis had adopted many tricks of survival. The same wiliness that saved their cultural heritage also protected hospitals, schools, and banks, as spontaneous armies of concerned citizens removed everything of value -- from furniture and heavy equipment down to lightbulbs and wires -- to relative safety dispersed in homes throughout the city. To further thwart Saddam's war effort, they sabotaged their own electrical, telephone, and water systems, even killed themselves and family members and blew up their own neighborhoods rather than serve a corrupt leader. It was a small sacrifice that proved successful. Saddam is gone, and they are free. Vive la Resistance!

Some of the looters stole big containers that could potentially hold anywhere between 300-400 kilograms of radioactive uranium. Some of the containers were empty but others were not. Al-Bah'ly says he thinks the river has been contaminated by people washing out the containers.

Al-Bah'ly inspects about four to five homes daily in the neighborhood of Tuwaitha, and says he saw some people using the containers to store water, milk and tomatoes, oblivious of the risks. Some containers were even used to transport milk to yogurt factories. Abu Dhabi Television has shown scenes of women using the containers to store drinking water.

At one home, Al-Bah'ly discovered radioactive contamination in clothes and beds. He describes a 10-year-old girl who had attached a piece of "yellow cake" (radioactive waste) to the edge of her skirt for decoration.

The mood is changing for the worse in Umm Qasr where food and medicine is desperately needed, writes Mark Baker from southern Iraq...

...The talk on the street is that remnants of Saddam's Baath Party are regrouping with military supporters who melted back into the civilian population when the coalition forces first swept through.

Large quantities of weapons and ammunition - including rocket-propelled grenades - have been stolen in recent days from poorly guarded Iraqi military stockpiles nearby.

"Everyone was happy when the soldiers came here to get rid of the old regime but now people are wondering what this so-called freedom has brought them," said the director of the local hospital, Dr Akram Gataa.

I was watching a replay of Bush's waste of 5 million some odd dollars for his photo opportunity on board the Abraham Lincoln when some congenital idiot (I forget which, but it was likely Chris Matthews) said that no Democrat could do that.

Eh, (cough), isn't John Glenn a Democrat? And wasn't he the first American to orbit the Earth? And isn't he the oldest human to ever fly in a space shuttle? It's pretty obvious that the media whores can't tell the difference between a man in a flight suit, and a monkey in a man suit. But I guess they've forgotten how to tug on zippers since Bill Clinton left office.

James Higdon

BAGHDAD — The vast majority of the Iraqi trove of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries.

A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a single display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items.

There is no accurate number to assign to the collection; Reichel said it was probably half a million. Many objects have never been registered. And, he said, no one really knows how many objects have been lost. The number 170,000 has been used in discussions of the looting of the museum, but Reichel said that estimate might not include the museum's collection of cuneiform tablets, examples of the earliest form of writing, which numbers about 100,000.

Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum told a news briefing in New York that exactly how many objects were stolen from the Iraq National Museum was ''very unclear.'' Curtis, who visited the museum after the fall of Baghdad, said experts would only know the full extent of the damage once an audit was completed -- a process that could take years.

The situation inside the vault is more difficult to assess, since the area has not been officially entered by museum staff. But, by peering through the hole broken into the brick wall, Dr George and Dr Curtis were able to see that in the first section, pots and other objects had been swept off shelves and abandoned on the floor. The extent of the losses remain unknown, but the hope is that in the darkened basement the looters would have found it difficult to locate the items of major financial value. Dr George believes that only a small proportion of the 170,000 objects in the vaults may have been looted, although this will only be confirmed after months of checking...

...But despite this latest encouraging news from Baghdad, it has to be stressed that the full extent of the losses will only become apparent once the museum vaults have been properly examined and the central bank safe has been checked. It remains clear that the looting and vandalism at the National Museum represents a tragedy which will take years to deal with...

...So far attention has been largely focussed on the National Museum, but there has also been serious looting and damage to other museums. Mosul Museum, the most important regional collection, was hit by looting even more badly that the museum in Baghdad.

In all, seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon's "special nuclear programs" teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact, though it remains unclear what materials -- if any -- had been removed.

...even the Bolsheviks protected the Hermitage during the Russian Revolution. In the Second World War, armies were under specific orders to spare historic sites and museums, even at cost to themselves. Chartres was not shelled though it contained snipers. Museums were looted, but by soldiers who respected what they were looting. They knew that a museum is not a warehouse. It is the custodian of the identity of a people. Robbing it is like seizing the crown jewels of a collective memory. It seeks to erase that memory...

...We who claim to crusade for civilised values could not summon one tank to defend their earliest repository. We stood and watched as a first link in the chain of our memory snapped. To tear off Saddam’s head we tore the heads off all his predecessors...

...I am now told that Washington is preventing the Iraqi antiquities staff, the most experienced in the Middle East, from conducting their own audit of what they have lost. This is an urgent task if police forces are to be warned of what might be recoverable. A US military base has been stationed in a wing of the museum. The coalition wants no more bad publicity about cultural losses. The insult could hardly be better designed to fuel the rumour machine.

Patriots make much of the dismal record of the French in matters military. Well, yes. It's hard to argue with failure. I note however that the French have Germany on their borders, a condition associated with military failure for everybody enjoying the same circumstances. Americans cannot always distinguish between military prowess and the Atlantic Ocean...

The State Department report on global terrorism for 2002 suggests that while Canada has been helpful in the fight against terrorism, it doesn't spend enough on policing and places too much emphasis on civil liberties.

Communications operator: "Hello police"

Caller: "My wife's left me two salmon sandwiches which was left over from last night... and I'm a sat in the chair here and she's out there decorating. She won't put any food on or anything for anybody, I don't know what...."

Communications operator: "I'm sorry but I really can't take this. It's not an emergency because your wife won't give you anything to eat."