Fisk: The War Comes to Baghdad - crazed normality, high farce and death

UK Independent -- As shells exploded to his left and the air was shredded by the power-diving American jets, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf announced to perhaps 100 journalists that the whole thing was a propaganda exercise, the Americans were no longer in possession of Baghdad airport, that reporters must "check their facts and re-check their facts – that's all I ask you to do." Mercifully, the oil fires, bomb explosions and cordite smoke now obscured the western bank of the river, so fact-checking could no longer be accomplished by looking behind Mr Sahaf's back.

And the more he spoke, the more one wanted to interrupt Mr Sahaf, to say: "But hang on, Mr Minister, take a look over your right shoulder." But, of course, that's not the way things happen. Why didn't we all take a drive around town, he suggested defiantly.

So I did. The corporation's double-decker buses were running and, if the shops were shut, stallholders were open, men had gathered in tea houses to discuss the war. I went off to buy fruit when a low-flying American jet crossed the street and dropped its payload 1,000 metres away in an explosion that changed the air pressure in our ears.

I am reminded of Hemingway dispatches.