They do it because they can

Apr 1 2003    From Anton Antonowicz in Baghdad


Grey and black smoke screamed from the roof of the presidential palace.

A place everybody knows is inhabited by Saddam Hussein's son Qusay, but it's a fact no one ever admits.

For half an hour the smoke hung in a pall over the city like an inverted teardrop - only slowly to be swept away by a westerly wind.

I was talking on the telephone, dictating my story to the Daily Mirror office in London when the attack happened.    What sounded like a huge bomb and a cruise missile struck the complex, sending up a mushroom cloud into the afternoon sky.

EXPLOSION:    Huge noise rocked Baghdad when Qusay's empty palace was bombed

It was a rage.    A flash of absolute anger.    A maddened act ending only in dust and ashes.

Storm blasts from the explosion gusted through my open balcony window and rocked the chair in which I was sitting.    Even from a distance of 500 yards, the explosion took my breath away.

After 12 days of this pounding it is worth explaining what it feels like to have to endure these seismic waves of destruction.    Each blast, each explosion, sends a tremor through your body.    It seems as though your mouth, your ears, your lungs are filled with the force of them.

The copytaker typing in my words yelled down the phone to me: "What the hell was that noise?"    I told her it was an explosion and she seemed to be almost as shocked as I was.

All day, air raids pounded the city, striking government buildings in the city centre.    Qusay's palace was also targeted on Sunday and has been hit several times since the bombing began.

To the south of Baghdad the artillery barrage continued.    And in the centre Tomahawk missiles ignited a fire that raged for 30 minutes before dawn at the Iraqi information ministry.



State television was off screen in the morning but was back by midday, although four hours later than usual.

Another telephone exchange was destroyed - the fifth in three days - cutting off 25,000 lines.

There were reports that a six- year-old boy, Ali Nasser, running to the air raid shelter with his family, had the back of his head blown off.    The exchange in Maiden Square, north west Baghdad, lies in a poor part of town.

The coalition knows how to drop bombs, but whether it can run a war is looking less and less likely with each passing hour.

Now it is Day 13 and time to take stock.    That this war is senseless seems now beyond doubt.    There were many ways of dealing with Saddam Hussein and this was the worst.

The CIA, once headed by George Bush senior, with a current budget of $28 billion a year, has shown itself to be institutionally flawed and fundamentally pointless.

The US administration has proved itself both gullible and arrogant.    Tony Blair now stands accused of naked naivety.

And, while no one would wish to praise the Iraqi regime, one can still see that it has known how best to fight these last 13 days.    We are all the wiser now - while ordinary people here are dying daily and young men go to their battlefield graves.

Earlier, I heard a report that an American general was overheard saying the final push on Baghdad may not happen for another month, while they consolidate their supply lines.

Yesterday, I heard the Iraqi information minister say the advancing troops were like a stretched boa constrictor which his boys would cut to pieces.

The Americans say four of their men were killed by a suicide bomber.    The Iraqis say 11 died.    Who to believe?    No one.    The only point is that one man decided to kill himself for his country.    And there will be many others.

I saw some of them training at a barracks in south Baghdad a fortnight ago.    They hailed from around the Arab world and were, for the most part, a jaunty bunch.

A plumber, a teacher, an electrician.    It was easy not to take them too seriously.    But not now.

Another set of youngsters passed through my hotel about a week ago.    Few were over 20 and they spent their time in the painfully slow lifts rearranging their headdresses and checking themselves in the mirrors.    They were all straining at the leash, searching for a fight while looking straight through me.

I was glad to see them go - whether home, or to the front, or, if they wished, to a martyr's paradise with the promise of 77 virgins each.    Are they crazy?    Youths with too much testosterone?    Religious fanatics?

WAR TALK:    Iraqi state TV yesterday showed footage of Saddam Hussein meeting his sons Uday, centre, and Qusay and military chiefs. It was not clear when the meeting was filmed

Or the most extreme products of an international system which has allowed the continued obscenity of Palestinian suffering and the civilians of Iraq to labour under 13 years of crippling sanctions, while the likes of American presidents and British prime ministers talk of human rights?

I ask this now because I still cannot understand how the alliance got it so wrong.    How they claimed the Iraqis would meet them with flowers and music.

The same Iraqis they have pummelled for those 13 years.    The same people they failed to help when they rebelled against Saddam in 1991.

Did the US and the UK really think they would be greeted with open arms?    And do they still hope so now, as the death toll increases and mothers mourn their children?

Our movements are monitored.    The information we receive is sanitised and spun.    But it is not difficult to see that this regime, bombed to hell, will fight and fight and fight.

The bombing has shattered palaces and headquarters, government buildings and telecoms centres, but its incessant pounding and the innocents killed have turned most Iraqis against the invaders.

I travel to the old Press Centre, where the Daily Mirror had its makeshift office.    The place was bombed for a second time early in the morning.

The plate-glass doors behind which we positioned our desk are smashed to pieces.    All the electrical wiring so painfully laid by Mirror photographer Mike Moore is no more.

The table for our satellite phone has been pinched, along with the three chairs and filing cabinet.    The reception desk has a steel girder through it and a framed photo of Saddam shattered on it.

It is difficult to see why the Americans decided to hit the place again.    It has been deserted and gutted since Saturday.    Maybe they simply hit it because they can.

Whack it with a $1 million missile or $55,000 bomb to make the point.    Perhaps it is based on vital military intelligence - a phrase which some may think is a contradiction in terms.

I drive on to the Hotel Al-Rasheed, where I have kept another room, just in case.    It is deserted except for a few cleaners.

A lady on my floor asks me if the place is going to be hit.    I tell her I have no idea.    But we've all heard the rumours.

After all, this is the place with a mosaic of Bush on the entrance floor - even though it has been carpeted over.    The place that was rocketed once before.    The place under which it is whispered, lie, "special government rooms".

I want to pick up some books and a shirt from my room, but the management has double-locked the door.    It takes 30 minutes to find the man with the right key.

The skeleton staff stand at the entrance and wave goodbye as if I was the duke and they the country-house servants in an Edwardian drama.

I find a small supermarket, buy a case of Seven-Up, a box of Mars bars - feeling like a schoolboy in a tuck shop - and return to the Palestine Hotel.

The buzz in the foyer is that the authorities have expelled two friends, a South African and an Australian, for venturing out without a minder.

I go quietly to my ninth-floor room and wonder when this lousy war will be over.