Thursday, April 10, 2003

Some interesting items from the Telegraph
Propaganda machine flees US marines:
The manager of the Palestine hotel put on his best suit and a broad smile and crossed his parking lot to meet the Americans. "Happy to see you," he said to an approaching group of soldiers.

Cradling their M16s and casting wary glances around them, the marines had just emerged from their armoured vehicles in front of the hotel in the middle of Baghdad. They looked taken aback by the strange welcoming committee.
...
Yesterday morning, the Iraqi press office in the hotel's former souvenir shop was empty. The large tables from which the official guides would oversee the journalists were empty. The last translators seemed unsettled by the absence of orders, like all the hotel staff. The minister's cashier, whose job was to take $225 a day from the journalists, had disappeared with a large sports bag over his shoulder.
$225 per day per journalist? There's a tidy little racket. Hmm, looks like the cashier has a well funded retirement plan.

'Bush nice, Saddam not':
On the top floor of the Transport and Communications Ministry the blaze spat glowing flames over a smiling portrait of Saddam Hussein.

Indifferent to the burning debris that fell from the top of the building, a queue of joyous looters took away everything they could carry. Children passed with neon lights. Shi'ite women, cloaked in black veils, piled furniture, chairs and air conditioning units on wheelbarrows and in their arms. Men carried away computer screens, giving thumbs-up signs. "Television, good. Bush, good." they grinned, without dropping their booty.
...
"Before I start telling you about life under Saddam, I'm going to wait for proof that he's dead," said Jassem, an engineer. "And even if I get it, I'm going to wait a little longer."
The UN sponsored "end" of the 1991 war has bred careful people - can't blame 'em.

And finally from the editors - Who got it right and who got it wrong? Don't worry, those who got it wrong won't be ashamed. But I wonder whether "Siege of Baghdad" Bobby Fisk used up his 25 rolls of Charmin? The arrival of the marines outside his hotel must have been good for a couple of them at least.