‘When Brent Pack talks about [Gilligan’s treatment] as being standard operating procedure, I find that a powerful and odd moment. He’s sincere, he’s not a bad guy, and yet he’s telling us something that is actually surreal and disturbing-even more so because he’s not a bad guy, because he’s being sincere. Or just seeing Lyndie England and how devastated she was by all of this. I’m moved by it. Call me crazy, but I am. She gives this final speech, which to me is so sad, about how maybe the whole world is just backstabbing and lying. You’ve got all of these players caught in this strange drama. The perversity of it all.’

» Doonesbury the soap opera (scroll down for article): ‘A four-box daily comic strip it may be, but Doonesbury is also a soap, probably the only one in the world to blend current affairs with a regular cast of characters, ageing, marrying, splitting up, starting dotcoms, doing performance art, having kids, running for office, fighting in America’s wars, going to prison and occasionally dying. For afficionados of Doonesbury, the sight of that bandaged stump on a stretcher and that never-before-seen hair was powerful and affecting.’

• How I became the Baghdad blogger … ‘I spent a couple of days searching for Arabs blogging and finding mostly religious blogs. I thought the Arab world deserved a fair representation in the blogsphere, and decided that I would be the profane pervert Arab blogger just in case someone was looking.’
• Salam Pax on the BBC’s Today Programme — requires Real Player.
• Webchat with Pax … On the Internet in Iraq: ‘…the US would use the internet for email attacks: everyone who had an email in Iraq got an email telling you to cooperate with the coalition forces, to stay at home. All the military commanders got their phone numbers changed because for hours when they picked up their receivers they’d get a voice message saying “don’t fight, go home” from the coalition. ‘

‘The history of warfare is marked by periodic leaps in technology – the triumph of the longbow at Crécy, in 1346; the first decisive use of air power, in World War I; the terrifying destructiveness of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, in 1945. And now this: a dazzling array of technology that signals the arrival of digital warfare. What we saw in Gulf War II was a new age of fighting that combined precision weapons, unprecedented surveillance of the enemy, agile ground forces, and – above all – a real-time communications network that kept the far-flung operation connected minute by minute. Welcome to the so-called revolution in military affairs…’

‘I’m headed north again, this time with a 97-vehicle convoy whose mission is to deliver missile launchers and set up a Tactical Operations Center just south of the Baghdad suburbs. But there’s a problem; the convoy makes two massive U-turns in search of a side road that leads to a much-needed fuel stop. “We’re lima lima mike foxtrot in Iraq,” says Sergeant Frank Cleveland, who’s riding shotgun in the truck where I’ve hitched a ride. “What does that mean?” I ask from the backseat. “We’re lost like a motherfucker,” he says.’

• 22 March – Pushing … Rageh Omar in Baghdad: ‘Every sign here is that Saddam Hussein and his commanders have escaped attempts to assassinate them, despite persistent rumours from London and Washington ‘
• 21 March – Attacks … Gavin Hewitt in Southern Iraq: ‘In the last few minutes we just crossed over the Basra-Baghdad highway. We’ve had several bizarre incidents in the last few minutes of drivers on the highway completely unaware that American armour may be this far north, stopping their vehicles in utter amazement as we crossed the highway.’
• 20 March – At War … Nick Bryant in Washington: ‘The White House is trying hard to show that things are calm. They’ve put a lot of effort into making the President’s day seem effortless.’

• Where is Raed? … ‘there is still nothing happening in baghdad we can only hear distant explosions and there still is no all clear siren.’
• Reporters’ Log: At war in Iraq … Paul Wood in Baghdad: ‘People are very jumpy here. We now know the city of Baghdad was not the main thrust of the air attack. The focus is being described as a “target of opportunity”, where five senior members of the Iraqi government were gathered. It is believed that Saddam Hussein was amongst them. In the last few minutes it appears the telephone system has gone down here.’
• Suddenly, the War is Very Real — Yesterday in Baghdad … ‘Reality finally came to Baghdad yesterday. Overnight, sandbags sprouted on football fields and roundabouts. In the evening the authorities rustled up yet another peace demonstration. The number of fatal car accidents seemed to surge, with drivers in a panic to get home, or to get out. Chemists sold out of valium.’ [via Words of Waldman]

‘Osama bin Laden is an identifiable human type, but on an unidentifiable scale. He is an enormous stirrer – a titanic mixer. Look how he’s shaken us up, both in the heart and in the head. One could say, countervailingly, that on September 11 America was visited by something very alien and unbelievably radical. A completely new kind of enemy for whom death is not death – and for whom life is not life, either, but illusion, a staging-post, merely “the thing which is called World”. No, you wouldn’t expect such a massive world-historical jolt, which will reverberate for centuries, to be effortlessly absorbed. But the suspicion remains that America is not behaving rationally – that America is behaving like someone still in shock.’

‘We hear about the successful “Texanisation” of the Republican party. And doesn’t Texas sometimes seem to resemble a country like Saudi Arabia, with its great heat, its oil wealth, its brimming houses of worship, and its weekly executions?’

‘Saddam’s hands-on years in the dungeons distinguish him from the other great dictators of the 20th century, none of whom had much taste for “the wet stuff”. The mores of his regime have been shaped by this taste for the wet stuff – by a fascinated negative intimacy with the human body, and a connoisseurship of human pain.’