US Marines have uncovered a cache of weapons in a house in Baghdad.

Gold-plated Kalashnikovs with the inscription: "A gift from the president of the republic, Mr Saddam Hussein."

What does that say about Saddam's psychology?

Gold-plated guns, for fuck's sake...

Shit. It was Lucrecia's birthday four days ago. Why did no one tell me?

Oh well, at least she doesn't have internet access during the holidays, and I don't have any way of getting in touch with her, so fneh.

Happy belated birthday anyway, Laura.

I'll buy you some Ben and Jerry's when you get back to Lancaster.

"I'm going to exercise my right of free speech for the first time in my life - we want you out of here as soon as possible." - Iraqi to a US Marine.

Saddam Hussein has already been spotted in more places than Lord Lucan. He's been in the Russian embassy, he's been in the mosque this morning, he's alleged to be on a convoy to Syria - no doubt he'll soon be found on a sofa in Huddersfield. - Andrew Gilligan, BBC News Online.

Apparently the flag that they draped over 'Saddam's' face was the one that was flown over the Pentagon on September 11th.

Remember what I said about some Americans being fucking moronic?

ITN has just abandoned the word 'independent' from their name.

Their report from Baghdad is insanely pro-western. Michael Nicholson, their 'veteran' war correspondent went out into the streets and welcomed the Americans, saying 'We've been waiting for you for three weeks now. What took you so long?' and the whole atmosphere was one of 'thank god Saddam's gone'.

He said, 'I don't speak a word of Arabic, but I can guess they're saying "Death to Saddam".' He then wandered through the crowd saying, 'Death to Saddam? Death to Saddam?', prompting responses from the people.

Utterly unprofessional.

However, they had a far better camera angle for the pulling down of the statue - right underneath it.

(It snapped at the knees, not the ankles.)

The people of Baghdad have been trying to pull down a statue of Saddam. Initially, the US Marines stood by and watched, and then joined in when it became too dangerous for the people trying to pull it down with ropes. Slight intervention, but the people didn't mind.

Then some fucking moronic grunt of a halfwitted US Marine went and draped the stars and stripes over Saddam's head.

The people on the ground were dismayed, but still supportive. The rest of the Arab world will be pissed off. They removed it, but I reckon some marines are in the shit for that one, after the negative reactions they received at Umm Qasr.

Fortunately, someone seems to have found the Iraqi flag and they've wrapped that around his head instead. A bit more appropriate symbolism. And another sign of how fucking stupid some American soldiers are. Fortunately, others were smart enough to realise what they'd done and it was the marines who put the replacement up.

I'm just watching the BBC news now. Rageh Omar's getting excited, and giving a running commentary to the events.

3.46pm - They've just taken the Iraqi flag down. Seems like they're selling it as a 'both flags = friendship' event. Bet the hostile sections of the Arab media won't show the second half of it.

3.48pm - They're starting to pull, but have to keep stopping because the crowd keeps surging forward. Damn this crappy reception I've been having for the past week.

3.50pm - The chains are taut, the APC's having trouble pulling, making a grinding sound.

3.51pm - It's wobbling.

3.51pm and thirty seconds - Still stuck to pedestal, but it's hanging dangerously. People keep throwing stuff at it, but the marines want to keep pulling it off.

3.52pm - Snapped at the ankles, by the looks of it. The crowd surges forwards and starts screaming at it, in floods of tears, hammering it with shoes (the soles of the feet being central to several major insults in the Middle East), battering it with masonry, kicking it, climbing on it, jumping up and down.

3.53pm - The Iraqi flag is fluttering from the remnants at the top of the pedestal.

3.54pm - The Iraqi commentator in the BBC studio was in tears - he's an exile from Baghdad.

Wow... one of those historic moments of symbolism, like Emperor Hirohito on the deck of the USS Missouri, American and Russian soldiers shaking hands in the ruins of Berlin, Nicolai Ceaucescu's corpse after the revolution that toppled him, Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank in Red Square, the demonstrators climbing the walls of the Serbian parliament, the British flag being run up over Government House in Port Stanley.

Squat army on eBay going for £175.

Not bad. I expected something in the region of £100, and it was only at £75 the day before yesterday.

Anyone who doesn't know what a squat is, it's not rude.

Oh, and this one as well.

http://www.thebrainstrust.co.uk/article.56.2743.html

Just thought this one needs to be posted:

http://www.thebrainstrust.co.uk/article.56.2737.html

The Bush administration is against the setting up of an international war crimes tribunal for Iraq, instead saying that they'd prefer a collection of joint US-Iraqi courts.

Is this to do with the usual US distrust of the UN (who are generally behind this kind of thing), heightened by the recent altercations?

Or are they more concerned about those US soldiers who opened fire on a civilian vehicle without firing warning shots?

Intriguing...

The British have discovered (thanks to an informant) that there's a secret bunker beneath Chemical Ali's palace. The main complex was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1998, but the underground bunkers remained intact. One of these was then walled up and apparently deliberately flooded.

Initial tests by the Joint NBC Regiment for biological and chemical weapons have proven negative, but officers have said there could be sealed containers in there. Divers have gone in to see what they can find.


(Wow, Iain Duncan Smith has just congratulated Tony Blair on the 'most excellently executed military campaign in recent history'.)

- Saddam Hussein has vanished, following a coalition strike on a restaurant he was eating in.

- Law and order has broken down in Baghdad, with widespread looting and reprisals.

- The police have vanished.

- As have the Ministry of Information officials who have been monitoring the reports of journalists. They just didn't turn up for work this morning.

- The Fedayeen and various other security forces are still holding out within the city, and there's ongoing combat within Baghdad.

- Outbreaks of joy in the poorer Shia parts of the city, the richer parts are showing a kind of 'muted nervousness'.

Still no sign of an offer/rejection from the Creative Writing department. I'll give it a few days and then get onto them.

- The SAS were the ones who located Chemical Ali in his own house - they called in the air/artillery strike. British forces have now found his body. This is the guy who videoed himself beating the shit out of prisoners of war. This is the guy who killed 300,000 people following the Shia rebellion in 1991. This is the guy who made his mark when he arrived in Basra by personally shooting a man in the street. This is the guy who gassed 5000 Kurds in 1988, part of a suspected total of 100,000 Kurds.

So, that's 400,000 people, and apparently many of the locals are too scared to accuse him of some crimes he's suspected of.

Half a million murders doesn't seem too unlikely.

Some people are better off dead.

(So, if Chemical Ali is alleged to have murdered nearly half a million people, how many has his cousin, Saddam killed?)


- Basra is virtually under British control. It's pockets of resistance time.

One of the most disgusting aspects of the regime I've seen yet, somehow even more so than the physical brutality, is Saddam's palace in Basra. Luxury's not the word. It's obscene. Everything metal is gold-plated, in hundreds of rooms, in just one of hundreds of palaces.

Meanwhile the people of Iraq have spent the last two decades starving.


- The Americans have launched another 'incursion' into Baghdad over night, but it seems like they were satisfied enough with the lack of resistance to hold the ground they took.

This one's just... moving.

Suicide bomber who surrendered

By Terry Richards and Tom Newton Dunn
With 40 Commando in Basra

The elderly Iraqi man walked gingerly towards the checkpoint set up by Royal Marines on the outskirts of Basra.
As he got closer to the troops they warily fixed their gun barrels on the shuffling figure in front of them.

Holding his hands in the air he shouted out in English: "Please, please. Surrender, surrender."

As I watched the man, in his 60s and dressed in flowing robes and head dress, he looked like just another frightened Iraqi trying to give himself up to the British.

Then he dropped six grenades on the floor.

One by one they fell from his Arabic tunic, clattering to the ground.

All hell broke loose as I, and dozens of others in the area, dived for cover.

For a few seconds it was still - the grenades hadn't gone off, the pins remained intact.

All that could be heard were the gentle moanings of the Iraqi man, repeating the words "Surrender, surrender."

British sentries on the roof of a nearby building shouted at him to get on his knees.

As he lay on the ground members of 40 Commando ran over and seized him, stripping off his clothes and checking for more weapons.

He was then arrested and led away for questioning.

Later the fisherman's tragic story emerged.

He told Marine commanders how he had been forced at gunpoint by Fedayeen militia to stage a suicide attack against their base.

Living alone, and with no family, they had deemed him a perfect choice to carry out their attack.

"The [Fedayeen] special operations team said I had three choices, they kill me, the British kill me, or I kill myself," the man, who wished only to be identified as Abdullah, said.

After dragging him from his home in the city, they drove him in a taxi to within a few hundred yards of the base.

Pushing him out of the car, they kept their guns fixed on the old man as he tottered towards the checkpoint.

But at the last minute, instead of detonating the grenades, he decided to surrender to the Marines.

"I did not want to do the attack because I hate Saddam Hussein and his regime and the British I see as my friends," he said.

"I am a Muslim and killing people is also against my religion, but they gave me no choice.

"When I walked up to the gate I thought, I cannot do this. So I told the British soldiers I am their friend and I pulled up my shirt and showed them my weapons, and they didn't shoot me."

Abdullah added: "There are other people like me that the regime forces to do things they don't want. We just want freedom".

Last night members of 40 Commando were understood to be carrying out an operation in the city to pinpoint the militia responsible.

The unit's commanding officer, Colonel Gordon Messenger, said "We now have good intelligence on the group behind this attempted attack.

"We also believe they are the men who attacked our base three days ago. They are hiding locally, and we hope to track them down very shortly."

FUCKING FIRE ALARMS!!!!!!!

The fire alarm went off about quarter of an hour ago. The fire brigade arrived promptly. And left again, because it was a false alarm.

It being Sunday, the porter's office is empty, and University Security still hasn't turned up to turn off the alarm. Now I'm sitting in my room, my left ear filled with a repetitive, two-tone electronic beeping that forces virtually every thought out of your brain (it's worse if you've only just woken up in the middle of the night - it fills the universe with noise).

This is something I certainly won't miss next year.

The Iraqi Minister of Information says that the Americans have taken a hell of a lots of casualties:

At the airport:
6 tanks destroyed

10 tanks crippled

50 dead US soldiers

Plus:
2 Apaches shot down near a village

3 APCs and 5 tanks on outskirts of Baghdad - during the drive-by

1 'shovel' - he meant excavator, and was very insistent that the English word was 'shovel'.

2 tanks and 3 APCs south of Baghdad


The media, meanwhile, sniggered.

An Iranian general has backed the Iraqi claims that the bones found yesterday were Iranian soldiers due to be returned to Iran after their war back in the 80s.

Doesn't change the fact that many of the dead seem to have been executed POWs.

A convoy leaving Baghdad and heading for Syria was attacked. Amongst the passengers was the Russian ambassador to Iraq.

If this was an American aerial attack, I don't particularly blame them - providing the convoy was in a flashy embassy limousine. You wouldn't want to let Saddam, Uday or Qusay Hussein to slip out of Baghdad that easily.

The Americans are denying that it's friendly fire - they know there was an attack, but say the reporters are probably confusing it with a previous friendly fire incident.

The Americans have also fired on a British helicopter - no casualties, apparently.

The transcript of that report:

'This is just a scene from hell'


The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson has been injured in Northern Iraq in an apparent mistaken attack on a US special forces convoy by one of their own planes.
Moments after the attack, John Simpson broadcast live by satellite telephone on the BBC news channel, News 24.

John Simpson
"Well it's a bit of a disaster... I was in a convoy of eight or 10 cars in northern Iraq coming up to a place that has just recently been captured. American special forces in a truck - two trucks I think - beside them, plus a very senior figure ..."

Simpson to US soldier: "Shut up. I'm broadcasting! Oh yes, I'm fine - am I bleeding."

US soldier: "Yes, you've got a cut."

Simpson: "I thought you were going to stop me. I think I've just got a bit of shrapnel in the leg, that's all. OK, I will - thanks a lot.

"That was one of the American special forces medics - I thought he was going to try to stop me reporting. I've counted 10 or 12 bodies around us. So there are Americans dead. It was an American plane that dropped the bomb right beside us - I saw it land about 10 feet, 12 feet away I think.

"We were so close to the damage and - it didn't damage us badly at any rate. This is just a scene from hell here. All the vehicles on fire. There are bodies burning around me, there are bodies lying around, there are bits of bodies on the ground. This is a really bad own goal by the Americans.

"We don't really know how many Americans are dead. There is ammunition exploding in fact from some of these cars. A very senior member of the Kurdish Republic's government who also may have been injured."

TV presenter Maxine Mawhinney: "John, just to recap for the viewers, an American plane dropped a bomb on your convoy of American special forces - many dead, many injured?"

Simpson: "I am sorry to be so excitable. I am bleeding through the ear and everything but that is absolutely the case. I saw this American convoy, and they bombed it. They hit their own people - they may have hit this Kurdish figure - very senior, and they've killed a lot of ordinary characters, and I am just looking at the bodies now and it is not a very pretty sight."

Just heard a live audio report from John Simpson (shrapnel in the leg, bleeding from the ears - the bomb landed about eight to ten feet from his vehicle).

Eight cars of Kurds and press, plus two trucks full of US special forces took a near-miss from a US bomb. American special forces men are dead, the BBC's Arab interpreter is seriously injured.


Other news:

- Chemical Ali's body has been reportedly found, which is why British troops have gone in. The Basra defenders are presumably 'decapitated'.

- Saddam has imposed a curfew on Baghdad, in preparation for the US invasion. Presumably he's been spooked by yesterday's 'longest drive-by shooting in history' - dozens of US tanks swept through the south-west of the city, killing hundreds (as many as two to three thousand, according to the coalition) of Iraqi fighters. The rocket launchers and light artillery pieces have come out of the closets, but there's still little sign of all the tanks that the Iraqis should have to defend the city.

The British have launched a major assault into Basra, the aim being to capture the city.

It does seem very likely that Chemical Ali is dead, after the artillery barrage against his compound the other day.

Meanwhile, US troops are massing near Baghdad, but they've only gone and bombed one of their own convoys in northern Iraq. There were special forces guys and Kurdish fighters in it. And John Simpson. He's reported at least ten dead, but we've no idea how many of them are Americans and how many are Kurds.

The deaths of half a dozen or so special forces guys, right in front of the international media, might persuade the Pentagon that its pilots are halfwits and that they need a lot more disciplining before they're allowed into the air with several million dollars of plane and several tons of high explosive.

Smart bombs, dumb pilots.