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http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/5434637.htm

President Bush announced the attack in a four-minute television speech to the nation… Minutes before the speech, an internal television monitor showed the president pumping his fist. "Feels good," he said. Shortly after his announcement, the State Department warned that U.S. citizens traveling or living abroad faced increased threats of terrorist actions and anti-American violence.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58981-2003Mar20.html

…Moments after the four-minute speech, Bush retired to the residence for the night. It all seemed oddly efficient… After Bush left to return to the residence for the night, an official observed: "He's very comfortable with this."

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http://davidcogswell.com/#high

We are talking now about a guy who as a kid put firecrackers in frogs and threw them into the air to watch them explode. He cracked himself up in an interview with Talk magazine by mocking a woman on death row whose cries for mercy he scorned, screwing up his face and saying, "Please don't kill me!" in an impersonation of the deceased. He presided over more executions as governor of Texas than any governor since capital punishment was legalized. His own people said he never spent more than 15 minutes deliberating over whether to sign the order to kill… This is a man who enjoys killing… Everyone is different. This is the way he is.

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a view from india

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar21/i3.asp

As the Zero Hour approached at 8 pm in Washington, the world waited with bated breath. Americans were in front of their TV sets… There were ad spots of Viagra, new car models, home loans, anti-plaque toothpaste, anti-acidity medicine, and business solutions by IBM… There were positive reports about the mood of President George Bush, his meetings with the top officials, and his dinner with the First Lady. Yesterday, he was shown playing with his dogs. While foreign policy and home security experts opined how necessary it was to disarm Saddam and support the leadership of Bush, one channel featured a Unicef woman from New York talking about the infant and child mortality in Iraq and the plight of those hit by dirty water and lack of food.

There was the reassuring [sic] presence in the pre-dawn Baghdad of famous TV reporter Peter Arnett, the veteran of the first Gulf War, who had to move to another channel because one of his reports of that time had displeased the authorities. It was he who broke the news [of the attack, before Bush notified the public].

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http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1045511936259&p=1012571727102

"This is a television event that has been promoted for 18 months," said Robert Thompson, a media studies professor at Syracuse University. "All of a sudden it starts, and it was extraordinary how little footage we had. You could have almost listened to it on the radio."

…Nielsen Media Research, which tracks US television viewing habits, said on Thursday that it was too early to declare which network had achieved the highest ratings on Wednesday night.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/20/nspin220.xml

Col Oliver North, the officer at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal, has emerged as the first star of the wartime US television ratings battle… "Some awful racket is going to come down in that Baghdad urban renewal project," he told viewers of Fox News this week, his joking euphemism for the air strikes soon to be unleashed on the city. Gloating celebration of US military might are the trademarks of Rupert Murdoch's news channel, but Col North has taken the trend to new extremes.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56948-2003Mar19?language=printer

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has issued orders that allow FBI agents and U.S. marshals to detain foreign nationals for alleged immigration violations in cases where there is not enough evidence to hold them on criminal charges, according to Justice Department officials and a copy of the rules. The regulations, issued in December but not announced publicly, significantly breach the wall that has long separated federal law enforcement agents from immigration officers, who previously were the only personnel authorized in most circumstances to detain people in the country illegally.

…Those covered by the order include, but are not limited to, visiting foreign nationals who must register with immigration officials as part of a government effort to fingerprint and photograph visitors from countries believed to have a significant al Qaeda presence.

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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/IteamInsider.html#diplos

The FBI is warning law enforcers to be on the lookout for Iraqi diplomats who stray from the only places they are allowed to be in the United States - the five boroughs of New York City and 25 miles around their office in Washington, D.C. The vehicles of Iraqi diplomatic personnel in New York and Washington have U.S. Department of State diplomatic license plates with special letter coding. In New York, they have the letters TSD. In Washington, they have the letters DTF.

The FBI alert says that suspicious activity involving vehicles bearing Iraqi diplomatic plates should be reported immediately to the nearest Joint Terrorism Task Force.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2003/03/20/protesters.DTL

12:30 P.M. PST -- Waves of anti-war protesters made good on their promise to disrupt downtown San Francisco this morning… Police had no immediate estimate of how many arrests had been made, but the total seemed likely to climb into the hundreds.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57593-2003Mar19?language=printer

…France's National Assembly briefly suspended its Thursday session in a symbolic protest.

…Germany said the outbreak of war "sparked grave concern and dismay in the federal government."

"Military action...is a big political error," Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

… Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

Pakistan said it opposed war and would continue pushing for peace.

…Saudi Arabia said it regretted the outbreak of war.

The United States closed embassies in Jordan and Pakistan and urged Americans to leave Lebanon.

China… called for a halt to "a violation of the U.N. charter and the basic norms of international law."

India said the attack lacked justification.

…Vietnam vehemently condemned it.

…Britain said its forces… played no part in the first attack.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2495197,00.html

Switzerland on Thursday banned American and other military planes from its airspace during the war in Iraq, expressing regret the United States acted without U.N. approval. =====================================

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,917977,00.html

Kofi Annan's office has barred UN staff from open opposition to the war in Iraq. Mr Annan's chief of staff, Syed Iqbal Riza, has written to the heads of all UN agencies to halt attempts to organise protests against the attack.

"There is a feeling among many personnel that the US used the UN until it didn't suit them, and then they trashed it," one senior UN official said. "We cannot openly campaign against the war but we wanted to make a public gesture - probably a petition - in support of Kofi Annan's efforts to ensure the security council as a whole had the last word. But he does not want a confrontation with the Americans on this."

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/20/1047749879550.html

Once upon a time, when "war" referred to nations clashing head on… There was no such declaration yesterday.

"The opening stages of the disarmament of the Iraqi regime have begun," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. President George Bush said allied forces had begun the "early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger".

…This invasion is called Operation Iraqi Freedom and it began with the President's order to blitz "targets of military opportunity"…The air attack was called a "decapitation".

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pipe down, rush Limbaugh!

http://rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_032030/content/limbaugh_doctrine.guest.html

Bush explained exactly why we're carrying the war on terrorism into Iraq: "We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities." Again: we're not "going to" this war; it came to us. This is the Limbaugh Doctrine expressed brilliantly.

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http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032003cdam3.htm

Just hours before a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California raised questions about whether top Bush administration officials had conflicts of interest in calling on U.S. companies to rebuild post-war Iraq. Waters questioned the propriety of including Kellog Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Haliburton Co.-the company that Vice President Cheney once led-in a list of companies being invited to bid on Iraq reconstruction projects.

"It really doesn't look good for the vice president of the United States ... to be able to increase the contracts" under the authority of the Defense Production Act, Waters told a House Financial Services subcommittee during the panel's scheduled markup of the act's reauthorization (H.R. 1280).

…The DPA, which became law during the Korean War and is reauthorized periodically, gives the president authority to cut through procurement red tape to assure swift delivery of equipment, supplies and services to troops… Waters offered an amendment that would bar companies whose former executives now serve as senior administration officials from participating for at least four years in contracts to which the act applies. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y… admonished Waters… "I think it's really irresponsible on the eve of the war to be (doing) this and implying something" about possible conflicts of interest, he said… The Waters amendment was defeated 4 to 12.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2868023.stm

Computer security experts are warning about a new e-mail virus…The Ganda worm comes as an e-mail attachment with a variety of subject lines such as "Spy pics" and "GO USA !!!!"… Others offer screensavers mocking President Bush.

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time zone converter:

http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

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iraq body count database:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm

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website of UK reporters reporting live in Iraq:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2866547.stm

710 GMT (1:10 pm US Central time) Near the Kurdish-Iraq front… The talk is of Saddam Hussein's speech on TV. I know there are questions being asked about doubles and if it was the real Saddam. I think it was him, the genuine Iraqi president. Saddam would never allow a body double to make a speech and certainly not this speech. It is after all one of the speeches of his life and possibly his last.

2237 GMT (4:37 pm US Central) A huge artillery barrage has been launched by US forces on the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq. The sound of incessant gun fire rumbled across the desert for the last 25 minutes.

It is not clear what the target is but there are several important oil facilities on the peninsula.

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website of US guy reporting live from his search engine:

http://www.agonist.org/

12:08 pm. US Central time. Eyewitnesses quoted in Reuters said that there are no signs of fires at southern Iraqi oil fields near the Kuwaiti border, either around the city of Basra or at the giant Rumaila oil field. A Reuters correspondent stationed 35 miles southwest of Basra and using a long-range night vision lens said there was no evidence of fires near the border. There have been numerous reports of fires at both Basra and Rumaila on Kuwaiti and Arab television, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld earlier said that he believed three or four oil wells were on fire.

1:01pm. The United States will ask all foreign nations to break links with Iraqi officials, and ask Iraqi embassies to close, in anticipation of the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime, AFP reports. U.S. embassies will be instructed to ask their host countries to declare that they no longer recognize Hussein's regime. The United Nations will be asked to make a similar request. One official said, "This may not go out until the government in Baghdad appears to be in more substantial distress."

6:02 pm. CNN is reporting that 'Shock and Awe' has been put on hold. But a little birdie told me that the current intermittent attacks against Iraq are designed to provoke a much-desired coup, flush out Iraqi command personnel and give covert forces on the ground an opportunity to strike.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,917860,00.html

US and British troops invading Iraq will have to care for 16 million Iraqis - almost two-thirds of the population - for whom state handouts of food are the only income, aid agencies are warning… Because Britain and the US intend to invade Iraq without the consent of the international community, they will be considered an occupying power under the terms of the fourth Geneva convention, which lays heavy responsibilities on occupiers to ensure law and order, protect private and public property, ensure food and medical supplies to civilians, and ensure hygiene and public health. The US has acknowledged its responsibilities… British army officials in Qatar said yesterday that US and British forces had stockpiled 3.5m daily food rations on the borders of Iraq… All the food is vegetarian and includes barley or lentil stews with rice or bread. The ration packs also contain servings of peanut butter and strawberry jam. The same rations were dropped over Afghanistan to perplexed Afghans who had never before seen peanut butter.