The local Fox affiliate, broadcasting a feed from Sky TV of a firefight, also covered by CNN, between some Iraqi soldiers and a group of U.S. soldiers, first broke away for a commercial break, then cut off the feed at 11:00, minutes after U.S. tanks fired on a building from which shots were coming, to air Mad TV, whose first skit was a parody of the Dr. Phil show.

The Observer also reports that Britain has contacted Andrew Natsios at U.S. AID.:
Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt has waded into the row over American companies carving up reconstruction work after the war in Iraq, lobbying direct with Washington on behalf of British companies. Hewitt telephoned Andrew Natsios, and argued British companies...should win work. She is said to have had a 'sympathetic' hearing.

London's Sunday-only paper, the Observer, reports:
American special forces were reported to be in Baghdad as thousands of elite troops still loyal to Saddam Hussein prepared for a final bloody showdown in the Iraqi capital.
The prospect of coalition forces fighting street by street for control of the city emerged after thousands of Saddam's troops withdrew to the city following a day of sweeping advances by US and British soldiers pushing north from Kuwait.

Canada's Globe and Mail reports:
As waves of U.S. warplanes hit Iraqi targets across the north, at least 60 Kurds were executed by Iraqis in an apparent sweep of revenge killings in the oil centre of Kirkuk, local residents said....The executions in Kirkuk were confirmed by resident leaving the city, as well as by senior government officials in the neighbouring Kurdish enclave. Kurdish officials said the executions took place at the Khalid garrison on the edge of Kirkuk within the past 48 hours, after people were caught last week trying to use satellite phones.

This story reports on the cancellation of a planned visit of Hamid Karzai to Islambad. According to the story, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said:
When contacted, foreign office spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said the visit had been put off due to Iraq war and security reasons.
Other officials at the foreign ministry linked the postponement to the cancellation of the Pakistan Day parade at which President Karzai was to be the guest of honour.

Today on CBS, electronic schematic maps of Iraq have shown cities like Tikrit, Mosul, Kirkuk and Baghdad obscured beneath continuous fiery blooms of explosives.

An AFP report says:
In Barcelona, between 500,000 and 750,000 people, according to figures given by city hall and organisers, protested against the war, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

An AP article says:
After decades of U.S. military aid and defense cooperation, the U.S. military is permeated by technology developed in Israel — from the Army's Hunter drones to the targeting systems on the U.S. Marines' Harrier jets to the fuel tanks on its F-15 fighters.

CBS tonight aired a profile of Harlan Ullman and James Wade, the two men said to have come up with the theory of "shock and awe" in the mid-'90s. Their book, called Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, was published in 1996 by the National Defense University Press. In interviews with the two men, James Wade said as applied in Iraq, it involves the "comprehensive use of all forms of American power." He also said American "Special Forces have been in Iraq for six months, maybe more than that." Those words do not seem to jibe with the idea that the U.S.-led war to destroy Saddam Hussein's government began only on Wednesday.

An editorial from Dawn, a leading Pakistan newspaper, includes these two paragraphs:

A break-up of Iraq is full of "possibilities" for America and Israel. An independent Kurdistan under Washington's auspices, for instance, could enhance America's leverage with Iran, Turkey and Syria - the first two with large Kurdish minorities. Also depending for sustenance and survival on America could be a Shia statelet in the south and a Sunni one in the middle. To these client mini-states, America would want to bring democracy!

In a larger context, America would not be unhappy to see - in the wake of Iraq's possible dismemberment - a popular "Islamist" backlash against "moderate" pro-US regimes. This would make clients only more dependent on America. More important, Israel will never fail to exploit the war and the post-war turmoil and convulsions to advance its own expansionist goals.

An article in tomorrow's New York Times discusses the proposed rebuilding of Iraq. It says, "the United States plans to retain control over the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq."

Later in the article, Andrew S. Natsios, who directs the U.S. Agency for International Development, is quoted. Using what appears to be circular logic, he said:

"The prime contractors are American, and there's a reason for that: In order to work in Iraq you have to have a security clearance, and the only companies that have security clearances are a certain number of American companies that have done this work before in war settings."

A story from Basra says:
Al-Jazeera quoted hospital sources as saying a total of 50 people were killed -- including one entire family and a Russian citizen -- when US F-16 warplanes bombed the city.

The station's images of wounded men, women and children lying bleeding in the seemingly poorly equipped Jumhuriya hospital and what appeared to be bodies wrapped in blankets, were beamed into the homes of millions of viewers, many of whom are already angry at the US-led war on fellow Arabs.

News from Iran:
An oil refinery depot in southwestern Iran close to the border with Iraq was hit by a rocket on Friday, and two people were injured, Iranian government sources said. Tehran immediately lodged a diplomatic protest at the violation of its airspace by US and British planes.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, speaking on Friday, said of the U.S.:
"They allow assassination as a national policy and this is frightening. We don't know who will be the next victim. If we happen to do something wrong then we could be assassinated.

"Although it's not a war between Christians and Muslims, it is clear that Muslim countries are being targeted by the US government. We know that Iran is included in the (US') 'axis of evil', so next could be Iran and then Syria, maybe Sudan and then Libya."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, quoted in an interview on Syrian television, said, "We're going to drag the drunken junkie nose of Bush through Iraq's desert, him and his follower dog Blair...There are 26 million Saddams in Iraq." He thus refers to Iraqis as clones of a sort of Saddam Hussein.

In the same fashion as George Heath, in MSNBC's continuing coverage of that attack on the 101st Division, one of the retired general's commenting for MSNBC just spoke of the Iraqi "Special Operations Force, they're a terrorist group," and reporter David Shuster referred to the attack as an "apparent act of terrorism."

Although news of violence in Nigeria, apparently related to political and ethnic frictions, has left perhaps 60 people dead, Yahoo has classified it not as a political or world news story, but as a business story. The Reuters headline reads, "TotalFinaElf Evacuates Nigeria Oilfield," not, for instance, "Nigerian Unrest Leaves Dozens Dead."

Similarly, in an AP report on those attacks, George Heath, the spokesman at the U.S. base of the 101st Division, refers to the attackers as terrorists:

"From our reports it appears that a terrorist penetrated Camp Pennsylvania, one or more terrorists threw two hand grenades into a tent."

Ashleigh Banfield, reporting on MSNBC a few minutes ago on the reports of an Iraqi Special Forces attack on the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait, used the language one uses to talk about criminals, not soldiers in a war, referring to the attackers as "suspects" and "perpetrators."

It's curious to look at two pages in the "Distinctive Properties & Estates" section of Friday's Wall Street Journal. The first, from Prudential, promises "extraordinary homes for extraordinary people. Like you." The second, from a waterfront condo development in Fort Lauderdale, invites one to "Embark on a Life of Indulgence." Considering what's happening in Iraq, it's hard to uncritically read either of those messages.

It is interesting to note that Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf today said, "Baghdad will remain with its head held high, the Baghdad of Saddam will remain defiant." He did not say, "the Baghdad of Iraq."

An AP story today has this quote: "It would be tragic if the Iraqis had some artillery," said 2nd Lt. Sarah Skinner of Vassar, Mich., a platoon leader.

In the context of that remark, it seems important to remember that the Iraqi military, and the individual Iraqi soldiers who have resisted the American and British forces, have suffered casualties from weaponry much more destructive than "some artillery."

Lead General Tommy Franks, in a news conference today, said about the presumption that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, "One would expect that weapons of mass destruction would perhaps be found in certain parts of the country,"-he used the uncertain future tense-rather than say "We will find weapons of mass destruction," he said "would" twice along with "perhaps" once.

A U.S. Army commercial shown this morning on CBS closes with first the motto "We will always win" sewn on a soldier's patch, then the graphic "Army of One"-is this a propaganda message for both the Iraqi military and the French government?

A Reuters story summarizing this weekend's new movies highlights one starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. in a movie that seems strangely timely, given all the aircraft carriers in the seas around Iraq:

"Boat Trip" stars Gooding, Jr. and Saturday Night Live's Horatio Sanz as a pair of heterosexual men set for a cruise on the high seas in a boat filled with single women. The problem is, the single women are dressed in drag and the rest of the cruise is filled with gay men.

Not so much fun, really, until Gooding's character, Jerry, hooks up with the cruise dance instructor, and Sanz' character, Nick, receives a welcome gift when the cruise ship rescues some bikini-clad Swedish beauties bound for Hawaii.

Inside Edition tonight covered the war in its unique fashion; one of its reports told viewers about Saddam Hussein's leisure habits, including a tendency to watch footage of World War II carnage and videos of torture sessions performed upon Iraqis.

A story in Saturday's New York Times quotes Anne Alexander, 27, a Republican of Rushville, N.Y., "It's quite obvious they have weapons of mass destruction. If we would have kept putting it off, we would have done a Clinton, and it would have been 10 more years before we actually invaded, and by that time we would have ended in more trouble than we needed to be."

It's important to note that the first President Bush, "41," was in office for nearly two full years after the close of the first Persian Gulf War, and it was his administration that, after urging Iraqis to rebel against the Hussein regime in the spring of 1991, watched and did nothing as thousands of those rebelling Iraqis were killed by the military.

Several months after the Bush tax cut plan was made public, and not quite two full days after hostilities were opened against Iraq, both chambers passed budget resolutions broadly supporting his plan. The New York Times says:

"The House passed its version about 3 a.m. by a vote of 215 to 212"; "In the Senate, the 50 hours of debate allotted under rules expired Thursday night. The Senate spent all day today in what is known as a vote-a-rama, one vote after another on amendments with only a minute or so in between when the sponsor was permitted to describe the amendment."

Some notes after two days of this war:

The dominant narrative the networks are using these first two days is the one they've used before. They're focusing on the individual soldier and his story, with his parents or his wife back home waiting for him, anxious for his return. Also, in the case of the few casualties, the networks rushed to capture their grief, while repeatedly mentioning the soldiers' sacrifice for freedom. On the other hand, Iraqi military casualties are mentioned in passing. Also, despite the Bush administration's insistence that is a multilateral effort, both the media and the government are speaking as though the U.S. military was alone in Iraq, usually saying "our troops," not, for instance, "the American and British troops." As in former military efforts, both tv and radio networks are using retired U.S. generals and colonels as the main commentators, with very little use of independent military experts. The focus on getting Saddam is constant-is he dead, where is he, did we get him-this is very similar to the obsession with Osama bin Laden in late 2001, early 2002.

Aside from the coverage of protestors and their protests, very few critics of the tactics being used, or of the idea of this war, are seen on major media. There is very little footage from the rest of the Middle East, with some news of protests, but just one civilian from Iraq has been interviewed-that was on ABC a couple hours ago. That man, a professor at the University of Baghdad, saw the attacks on the Baathist buildings as an attack on all of Iraq, and asked Americans if they would regard an attack on the Pentagon as an attack on just the military and the government, or as an attack on the entire country. Lastly, in the footage from Safwan's liberation, the sight of a soldier beginning to tear down a poster of Saddam is of note. That's because we then see an Iraqi banging a shoe on the face of Saddam-in a culture where pointing your feet at someone is a deep insult, this is like burning someone in effigy. For example, in a Reuters story, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said about Rumsfeld and President Bush, "Those only deserve to be hit with shoes."