It's close to midnight here, and nearly 10:00 a.m. in Baghdad (9:00 if they don't have daylight savings time) The news is really weird. Another sighting of Saddam and sons was called in by CIA operatives and a building in Baghdad was hit by 4 2000 lb. JDAMs. They'll have to look for body parts and use DNA testing, if the pictures of the spot are accurate. The Fog of War News is all around.

As I was watching Fox a few minutes ago, they had a split screen showing a feed from Abu Dhabi TV overlooking a bridge leading to the eastern bank of the Tigris River, when two Abrams tanks pulled up onto the bridge. Then you saw rock chips and smoke or dust just in front of the camera, which panned up to the sky and then tipped over, so all it showed was the railing from the deck or roof it was standing on. Views of a plane identified as an F-14. Then a closer view of the tank on the bridge came up for a moment before it was blanked out by a cloud of dust.
Apparently a bomb from an F-14 had been dropped between the camera and the tank on the bridge.

The tanks are being attacked by "technicals," that robust armament from Somalia. But they don't stand up well to Abrams tanks and Bradleys with chain guns. This ain't Blackhawk Down.

Monsoor Ijaz is commenting and saying that the Imams are all telling their people that they should not resist what the Americans are doing. He's saying that the way this war is being fought is proving to those who can see it that we're coming in good faith.

We're doing this right. We're taking pains to avoid harming civilians. We're bringing humanitarian aid. We're respecting their sacred sites and their antiquities. And we're making it clear that we don't want to occupy this country any longer than it takes for them to get an Iraqi government working. These points seem to have been totally disregarded by those who are determined to paint this as an imperial conquest. If this is an empire, it's certainly not in the Roman model. America the Un-empire.

Earlier the Brits announced that they had killed "Chemical " Ali in Basra, but now they're saying it's not he. I don't know if we'll ever know for sure about any of these guys. I wish we quit announcing this reports about Saddam or anybody else. The only way to know for sure is to find the corpse or wait a few years to see if he pops up somewhere else. With all of Saddam's doubles, we could kill him a dozen times and still not know if we got him.

Some good news is that the Al Jazeera offices have been hit by a missile, is where the Information Minister, aka Baghdad Bob, aka the Black Knight, was broadcasting his reports. Al Jazeera reports that it was hit by 4 missiles, which may mean that nothing happened to it at all. But the camera position showing two tanks on the bridge was definitely targeted to prevent Abu Dhabi TV from broadcasting their operations. Brian Wilson of Fox is suggesting that the Abu Dhabi camera was located above a machine gun emplacement which drew fire and caused the camera to be knocked down. No information about what happened to the camera operator. Then a second shot came which appeared to be from a closer camera at a slightly different angle. Then a bomb (apparently) blew up an obscured the scene. No telling what happened to that camera either.

Rick Leventhal reports that George Bush could run for president in Iraq and win in a landslide. Heh. Maybe he needs to be sure that no Democrats are given a role in the rebuilding, just democrats. This is quite a show.