INGRATES: It's been fascinating over the last few days watching how the post-war events in Baghdad have been reacted to by the Bush team. Early on, the looting and destruction was dismissed by Rumsfeld as being acts of insignificance being blown up by the media. Then Geoff Hoon suggested that robbing your neighbours and tipping dying kids off was a way of marking the end of Saddam Hussein regime. Virtually everybody who supported the war was quick to challenge those of us who had our doubts "bet you wouldn't like to have to explain to those cheering Iraqis why you objected", happily ignoring that at least as many seemed to be pissed off at having been invaded by the Americans. These people were dismissed as being of little significance. Now that there have been protests against the US in Baghdad - protests attended by far more people than turned up for the statue toppling - Fox News decided to berate an Iraqi for his nation's ingratitude - "one hundred and twenty five Americans died" cried the anchor as if this should make a difference to a country who've been told that the (at least) one and half thousand dead civilians of its own were a price well worth paying; a knock down price, even.
This is even demonstrated in the coverage of the kid whose arms got blown off by coalition bombs - the angle is always "Aren't we great in the West, we're helping this kid - bet Saddam wouldn't have" rather than remembering that it was us who slaughtered his entire family and took his arms in the first place. Ali Ismaeel Abbas was not a member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle, nor did he have weapons of mass destruction concealed in his elbow.

 
END-BY-END: Not only has News 24's coutndown returned, and Fox News picked up the threads of unsolved grisly crime to fill the yawning hours, but it looks like the BBC has ceased the Iraq war Alerts. If only Churchill had had such a way of telling when the Nazis had capitulated. Anyway, just for the sake of completeness, here are the last three alerts
12-04-03 17.02 BST A senior aide to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, General Amir al-Saadi, surrenders to US forces in Baghdad, it is reported.
13-04-03 11.03 Six American prisoners-of-war have been rescued alive by marines
north of Baghdad, reports say.
14-04-03 06.57 US forces have seized control of the centre of Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, according to correspondents at the scene.

 
UPDATE: I guess some people might have put the quiet period at the Warticker down to us licking our wounds and being wrong - apparently the war's outcome kind of proves that the anti-war movement were wrong and the pro-war lobby was right. This seems to be on the basis that the ends must always justify the means. Actually, we've just been away on work-related stuff for a few days.
So, to catch up: the Guardian has reported that support for the war is now at the level of anti-war sentiment at the start of March, throwing up the unusual suggestion that nothing has made the British behind war like the sight of suddenly orphaned kids who've had their arms blown off. Curious.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair told parliament that he'd spoken to Bush and he could state categorically that there were no plans being drawn up for an extension of the war to Syria. Now, since it's been widely reported elsewhere that Rumsfeld had drawn up plans - nixed by the White House - to engage Damascus (and Rumsfeld and the CIA's public pronouncements on the Syrian's assistance for Iraqi badguys supports this) either George Bush has lied to his biggest ally, or the British Prime Minister stood at the despatch box and lied to parliament. I wonder which it is?
And let's not assume that George W has gotten soft in his victory. The main reason why the US doesn't want to attack Syria - yet - is simply because America can't take on Syria yet. They lobbed so many missiles at Iraq they're down to a critical level; they've only got the weapons they need for defence purposes.

 
FAIR AND UNBIASED: Many rumblings of discontent over Fox New's reporting of the war at a time when the son of Colin Powell is deciding on the future of media regulation in the states and Fox owner Rupert Murdoch is bidding for DirecTV. Of course, the fair and unibiased station will be sure to cover this story in a really balanced, open way, won't they?