For a continous war update see: The Agonist
For analysis see: dailyKOS and Talking Points Memo
For a blog of an unembedded journalist: Back to Iraq 2.0

Images of War

Reallocation of wealth
Two Iraqi women carry furniture away from an Iraqi government office building on fire in downtown Bagdhad on Friday. Widespread looting continued in the Iraqi capital after the disappearance of Iraqi government officials and police.
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TEARING DOWN THE STATUE....

But it's hard to ignore the duplicitous role of the media in hyping yesterday's main Kodak moment: the destruction of the statue of Saddam in central Baghdad. The camera shots all gave the very deliberate impression that this event was played out in front of a huge mob of cheering Iraqis, and these video images were played incessantly, at least three or four times an hour.

But as the photo below shows, the truth was rather different: there was a gathering of at most a hundred, and more likely only a few dozen Iraqis present in the square for this event.

As seen on TV

The long shot doesn't show many people. How is that?

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Robert Fisk: Flames engulf the symbols of power

Baghdad is burning. You could count 16 columns of smoke rising over the city yesterday afternoon. At the beginning, there was the Ministry of Trade. I watched the looters throw petrol through the smashed windows of the ground floor and the fire burst from them within two seconds.
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Robert Fisk: Baghdad: the day after
Arson, anarchy, fear, hatred, hysteria, looting, revenge, savagery, suspicion and a suicide bombing

It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later.
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SHOPKEEPER KILLED

US soldiers have shot and killed a Baghdad shopkeeper defending his business with a Kalashnikov assault rifle against looters.
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  thanks to American Samizdat

FIRES BURN IN BAGHDAD

Fires are still burning across the Iraqi capital after looters set light to government ministries and banks in full view of US forces.
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Crowd Kills 2 Clerics at Shiite Shrine

A furious crowd hacked two clerics to death in a Shiite Muslim shrine Thursday when a meeting meant to be a model of reconciliation in post-Saddam Iraq erupted into a melee between rivals, witnesses said.

The bloodshed underscored how difficult it will be to bridge deep emnities and political rivalries in Iraq as the American military and interim administration led by retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner tries to fill the power vaccuum left by the collapse of Saddam's regime.
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