THE SCIENCE OF CONFLICT: There's a lot of technical stuff relating to the Iraqi conflict - like how could a country actually hide a weapons programme, and yet forget to hide twelve small tubes? - and most of the coverage given to the war tends to gloss over this; often because it's in the interests of Downing Street - White House - like when the list of stuff the Iraqis could have had was being read out on a new show by an American spokesperson; he got to ricin and said 'which I believe is the weapon of choice for terrorists in London now'; like terrorists would bother to import ready-made ricin from Iraq when its so easy to make at home; and, indeed, like there's been any terrorist attack anywhere in the world using ricin. Anyway, the New Scientist website has collected a bunch of articles covering the science of the war from a range of angles. So, for example, there's coverage of Medact's latest guesstimates of the number of casualties that could be caused by war; ranging from 10,000 to nearly four million and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's warning that, since attempts to secure a France-sized country would take a while, the upshot of changing the regime in Baghdad would be more weapons of mass destruction going astray. It's a great resource.

 
HA! THWARTED: Pity the poor UK-Hawks; there they were, with their unlikely sounding report that Al-Qaeda tried to build a dirty bomb they must have thought they could at least have nudged the public appetite for war a few more points in their favour. But then it snowed, and The Evidence got forced off the news agenda by "People in London take quite a long time to get home from theatre."

 
READY YOUR 'I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS NOT NEW POLITICS EXPRESS' LETTERS: NME asks its readers should we get our war on?

 
LITTLEJOHN - YOU CAN COUNT ON HIM: Last night trotting out "If it wasn't for the US, Europe would be speaking German now." Um, Dickie - what do you think they speak in Germany, Austria, and bits of Switzerland and Italy?

 
TODAY, IT'S AL-QAEDA: The ever-spinning US policy top - "We must have regime change"/"Saddam must be brought to justice"/"Saddam has a nuclear programme"/"It's the chemical weapons he's got"/"He can go into exile" - has moved again, we see. Now, it's the links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq that are the reason why they just have to unleash their bombs on Baghdad (and any unfortunate Canadians who get in the way.)
There was a senator - I think, it was very windy while I was listening - on 'Today' who had the cheek to say "We had our wake up call, and maybe the UK hasn't had their wake-up call yet" - that'll be it, we need a few dead civilians to get us into line, don't we? - and then theorised: if America had struck Afghanistan before September 11th, would that have been right? And would Europe have supported them? His responses were yes; and no.
But hang on - wasn't bombing the fuck out of Afghans meant to stop the very Al-Qaeda you now say are hiding in Iraq? So, let's not lose sight of how ineffective that was anyway. And why would have taking on the Taliban stopped September 11th? Weren't those terrible attacks planned and organised in Germany and the UK and carried out by people living in the West? And without even the veneer of respectability conferred by Spe'ven, wouldn't the apparently unprovoked brutal pummeling of an indpendent nation seemed even madder and less justified, and acted as great rallying call for Osama and his chums?

 
EYE OFF THE BALL SLIGHTLY: We know the Observer's family, but surely the Guardian should be more worried at its sister title adopting a "dropping bombs could be the way ahead" line rather than the Indie on Sunday trying to drum up a few readers.

 
NO KATE: On the eve of war, Kate Adie quits the BBC.

 
A CHEAP HOLIDAY IN SOMEONE ELSE'S MISERY: Holidays In The Axis of Evil, BBC4, last night. This bloke went to North Korea, where the camera crew upset a woman because she was saying "We'd be prepared to wipe America off the face of the earth, but if they want to talk peace, so do we." Only she thought they laughed at the peace bit - it was like you'd giggled at someone saying "this is the body of christ" before having their wafer.

Then he went to Iraq, which was scary - Iraqi TV spends the evening playing pop videos of young boys singing about how they love Saddam and his - ahem - "constructions so huge everyone is amazed."

But then he tried to show how bad Iraq was by saying "we're here [in Ur], the birthplace of writing, and yet children have to beg for pens" - cut to picture of team being besieged by kids holding hands out for biros. Fair enough, but when I was at school every time we'd go on school trips, or a speaker would come in, if they had pens with the company logo on there'd be a huge knot of over excited children there, too.

 
FROM NO ROCK AND ROLL FUN: The creation of this blog was in no way an inevitable spin-off of No Rock and Roll Fun and the No Rock Colour Supplement. Can you cover a war in the way same way you cover Britney shagging Fred Durst? Let's find out, shall we?