Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson are frightened for their son Joe, a 25-year-old Arab-language specialist with the Marines who is stationed somewhere in the Persian Gulf region. They are also frightened for all the sons and daughters of the families they have met since forming Military Families Speak Out, a group of 200 families opposed to the war who have loved ones serving in this war. Ubiquitous at protest rallies in Washington and Boston, where they live, Lessin and Richardson were also the lead plaintiffs in an unsuccessful lawsuit that sought to stop the president from invading Iraq, on the grounds that it was illegal to do so under international law. Lessin was also arrested last week with religious leaders who tried to block access to the White House as part of a stepped-up campaign of civil disobedience to protest the war.

The couple plans more civil disobedience, and sees no inconsistency in supporting the troops and opposing the war. "We're actually surprised that people have trouble with this one," said Richardson, director of the labor extension program at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. "If this war is wrong, then stopping it is the right thing to do."

In other words, he said, "if you saw one of your kids getting into a car with a drunk driver, would you stand by the side of the road and salute? Or would you do everything in your power to stop the car?"

King Abdullah is walking a tightrope. For years his small kingdom, trapped between Iraq and Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia, mostly desert with few natural resources, has thrived on its status as an American ally. But now he is under intense pressure from the United States to assist its invasion of Iraq. And equally intense pressure from his people to oppose it.

The fury all around the Arab world at the war in Iraq is seething here too. Jordanians at yesterday's protest were calling for the American and British embassies to be closed, and for the Jordanian government to open the border with Iraq so they could go and fight alongside the Iraqis against the invading Americans.

Popular fury over the war and continuing noisy street protests are threatening the stability of many autocratic governments in the Gulf region that rely on US support.

Protests also swept across Muslim countries in Asia yesterday. Bangladesh postponed its annual independence celebrations because of the war, while in Indonesia a small Islamist political party with admittedly limited means was deluged with volunteers after it advertised for fighters to go to Iraq to join the anti-American resistance.

Amid rising tensions in Saudi Arabia, the authorities floated a proposal to bring an early end to the war, saying it was in both sides' interests to stop the fighting and try to find another solution to their problems.

The initiative, being co-ordinated by the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Bahrainis, comes at a time when anti-American and anti-government sentiment has been simmering for years. It risks reaching boiling point if the war becomes protracted.

In the months before war a debate raged in the Pentagon between, crudely put, the uniforms and the suits. The soldiers wanted more time, so they could build up to the 250,000 troops that would constitute the "overwhelming force" believed since the first Gulf war to be the best way to deploy US power. They wanted another month. But the Pentagon civilians, led by Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, insisted on going earlier, with many fewer men.

Why would a hawk like Rumsfeld prefer less to more? My Washington source offers an astonishing explanation: "So they can do it again." The logic is simple. Rumsfeld and co know that amassing an army of quarter of a million is a once-a-decade affair: 1991 and 2003. But if they can prove that victory is possible with a lighter, more nimble force, assembled rapidly - then why not repeat the trick? "This is just the beginning," an administration official told the New York Times this week. "I would not rule out the same sequence of events for Iran and North Korea as for Iraq."

There was no talk about the Geneva Conventions when contingents of Arabs and Moslems were flown to Guantanamo Bay, shackled, handcuffed, gagged, hooded and chained to their aircraft seats only to be thrown into chicken coops open to the elements.

There was no mention of any conventions when John Walker Lindt was interviewed while he lay on a stretcher in Afghanistan. Oh, yes. These were 'detainees'.

They are the disappeared whose lives were not dignified with the title 'prisoner of war', except for Lindt, of course, who got special treatment due to his American passport. The others were left to rot without contact with their families and no recourse to legal representation.

Donald Rumsfeld who is the very person, who once said that he doubted that most of them would ever be released, is now bleating in the most hypocritical fashion about the Geneva Conventions. . . .

And has the White House or the Pentagon ever said a world about IsraelÂ's breaches of the Geneva Conventions? Even as 10 per cent of Jenin was demolished, Palestinian refugees used as human shields and ambulances prevented from reaching the sick and injured, the Bush administration stayed silent.

At this stage, it is not clear if the 15-member Security Council will be pushing for a formal resolution at the end of this open session calling for an end to the hostilities and withdrawal of all foreign forces. Those in favour of such a resolution will have to first make sure they have nine votes to pass the resolution. Even then the U. S. and Britain will most certainly exercise their veto.

One scenario is that if a resolution is killed by a veto in the Security Council, the Arab League could call for an Emergency Session of the 191-member United Nations General Assembly.

To get this going, a petition signed by at least 97 States is required. This will not be difficult; and the chances of a resolution condemning the U.S.- led attack on Iraq passing the General Assembly is also high given the existing sentiments.

A resolution cannot be vetoed in the General Assembly. At the same time, resolutions are not legally binding unlike the case of the Security Council, but are seen as reflecting the views of the world opinion.

[T]o the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy . . . . invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism . . . a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

In short, the administration is trying to roll the table -- to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative -- Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria -- while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments -- or, failing that, U.S. troops -- rule the entire Middle East.

Washington's ambassador to Canada has delivered the sternest public rebuke by a U.S. representative since the Trudeau era, saying Americans are upset at Canada's refusal to join the war in Iraq and hinting there could be economic fallout.

At a breakfast speech yesterday to the Economic Club of Toronto, U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci said "there is a lot of disappointment in Washington and a lot of people are upset" about Canada's refusal to join the United States in its efforts to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. . . .

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien retorted that Canada is a "sovereign independent country" that makes its own decisions and that there is unhappiness all around over the war in Iraq.

"We, too, are disappointed" that the United States went to war in Iraq without the approval of the United Nations, Mr. Chrétien said.

While the trade decision was called interim, with the final report expected next month, it is rare for an interim decision to be reversed. If the United States loses next month, European and other nations could impose trade sanctions of comparable value against the United States.

Last spring, Mr. Bush imposed tariffs of nearly 30 percent on most types of steel imported from Europe, Asia and South America, the biggest government action to protect an industry in several decades. While it was praised by the steel industry and trade unionists, the move was criticized by free trade advocates and companies that use steel in manufacturing.

The case against the tariffs was brought by the European Union, which accused the United States of illegally protecting the steel industry. . . . But there was no celebratory statement or any comment from the Europeans today. All spokesmen said they would not discuss an interim decision, but foreign officials also said Europe wanted to avoid creating a further division with the United States in a time of war.

The overwhelming majority of international lawyers, including several who advise the government (such as Rabinder Singh, a partner in Cherie Booth's Matrix Chambers), have concluded that military action in Iraq without proper UN security council authorisation is illegal under international law. The Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, resigned on precisely this point after 30 years' service. This puts the prime minister and those who will be fighting in his and President Bush's name in a vulnerable legal position. Already lawyers are getting phone calls from anxious members of the armed forces.

Blair accuses opponents of war of "appeasement" - in spite of the fact that, in many cases, their active opposition to Saddam's dictatorship well predates his. (I signed the 1987 early day motion against arms exports to Iraq. Blair and Gordon Brown didn't.) If anyone is the "appeaser" it is Blair, in his support for the US government's pre-emptive attack on Saddam. . . .

Many in the Labour party believe Blair has misunderstood the pressing danger. It comes not from Iraq, but from terrorism. If there is a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, it is this: Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein. On at least two occasions Bin Laden's organisation has tried to assassinate Saddam. The effect of this war, however, could well be to bring the pair together. This is a war that will strengthen terrorism.

Could this be the first internet war? As the Spanish civil war brought us the first classic photojournalism, and the first Gulf war saw the heyday of CNN, and with it 24-hour rolling news, could this war be the birth of the internet as the primary source for news?

The world's major news outlets are finding it so. The readership of their online versions, including this paper's, has increased dramatically since the start of hostilities. With multiple journalists filing frequent reports from the battlefield, the only outlet wide enough, and fast enough to keep up is the net.

As the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised a "campaign unlike any other in history." What he did not plan or expect, however, was that the peoples of earth -- what some are calling "the other superpower" -- would launch an opposing campaign destined to be even less like any other in history. Indeed, Rumsfeld's campaign, a military attack, was in all its essential elements as old as history. The other campaign -- the one opposing the war -- meanwhile, was authentically novel.

"Whatever the immediate postwar arrangements for governing Iraq may be . . . it is desirable for the UN to be involved as swiftly as possible in any interim administration. Some sounding board for local opinion . . . should also be put in place. This will be uncomfortable and rancorous since the views of the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds are unlikely to be as one; but the effort must be made -- and be seen to be made . . .

"The establishment of any longer-term government . . . is fraught with difficulty . . . The depth of bitterness between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds is such that any 'grand coalition' is impossible . . . Yet, unless military governorship or UN administration is to be lengthy, we must anticipate a legitimate government that may reflect the numerical dominance of the Shias . . .

"We would be wise to consult Arab opinion . . . We should discuss our plans with the EU, China and Russia, and seek their active political support: We may, after all, need them to open their wallets as well. As we do so, we should not neglect the views of our allies, Australia, Spain and Japan prominent among them. In victory, magnanimity may heal wounds."

Intelligence analysts at the CIA and Pentagon warned the Bush administration that U.S. troops would face significant resistance from Iraqi irregular forces employing guerrilla tactics, but those views have not been adequately reflected in the administration's public predictions about how difficult a war might go, according to current and former intelligence officials.

SALAHUDDIN, Iraq, March 26 -- Iraq's U.S.-endorsed opposition has distanced itself from the Bush administration's war strategy, suggesting the plan to conquer the country without involving the Iraqi public has opened the way for military problems in the south.

Opposition organizations all desired direct Iraqi involvement in the war. Just how much popular resistance they could have mustered remains an open question. But from their offices here in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, the groups have expressed little surprise that Iraqi civilians appear reluctant to greet allied forces, much less take up arms to expel government militias and soldiers from their midst. . . .

"There's a total lack of Iraqi involvement," said Zaab Sethna, an aide to Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group based in London. "We have been surprised over the months the lack of cooperation with the opposition."

The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group based in Iran, said the Bush administration has shared none of its plans with the opposition. Its leader, Mohammed Bakir Hakim, told Iraqi Shiites on Tuesday to remain neutral in the war.

"We are not in favor of this war because it places the future of Iraq in foreign hands," he told reporters in Tehran.

Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday. . . .

Overhanging all developments in the war this week is the unsettling realization that thousands of Iraqis are willing to fight vigorously. During planning for the invasion, worst-case scenarios sometimes predicated stiff resistance, but "no one took that very seriously," an officer said.

"The whole linchpin of this operation was the reaction of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi ground force," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a specialist in war planning. "If they don't turn, and so far they haven't, we have a very different strategic problem facing us than when we went in."

What went wrong? Did a poorly conceived propaganda effort by British intelligence, whose practices had been known for years to senior American officials, manage to move, without significant challenge, through the top layers of the American intelligence community and into the most sacrosanct of Presidential briefings? Who permitted it to go into the President's State of the Union speech? Was the message -- the threat posed by Iraq -- more important than the integrity of the intelligence-vetting process? Was the Administration lying to itself? Or did it deliberately give Congress and the public what it knew to be bad information?

One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said.

Turkey's rejection not only forced a rewrite of the war plan, but it undercut the administration's broader diplomatic efforts to win international support for an invasion. Diplomats said the image of Turkey resisting U.S. pressure emboldened smaller countries on the U.N. Security Council to reject a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military action. The failure of that resolution in turn made it impossible for the United States to recruit such close allies as Canada and Mexico to join the fight against Iraq, since they had tied their support to a new resolution.

On CNN last night, Wes Clark made a interesting and ominous observation, which he said he based on recent conversations with various region experts. The gist of it was that we have a four or five week window to finish this up. And if we don't do it before then, a bad chain of events kicks off. Saddam starts to look strong, like he's making a stand against America, and so forth. Then Arab or non-Arab Muslim volunteers start streaming into the country to take up the fight. Basically, instead of just being angry and marching in their own countries because they think we're clobbering Iraq, they decide that Saddam's actually making a fight of it and go to get in on the action.

I can't say whether this is an accurate prediction or not. But it has the ring of truth to it -- in my ears at least. And, regardless, it's probably one of the issues that's being considered. Unfortunately, says the Galloway article, the 4th ID won't be ready for at least three weeks.

That the math doesn't add up too nicely, does it? Maybe we do have to hit Baghdad now to prevent some broader regional deterioration.

The one thing that seems really clear is this: We should not be in this position of having to decide whether to go in under-gunned or wait longer than we can really afford to. This is what's so nice about having the world's most powerful military, several times over: you shouldn't have to wing it. We should have had all the necessary troops and hardware in position when we pulled the trigger on this war, rather than having what turns out to be a critical component on the ground in Texas.

Why was that allowed to happen?

A vice is slowly beginning to close on US and British political leaders who ordered or justified the launching of war on Iraq. This potentially fatal squeeze is the product of two opposed dynamics. One is the dawning realisation that the war will not be over quickly, may indeed drag on for months, and will certainly not be the "cakewalk" predicted by Kenneth Adelman of the Pentagon's infamous defence policy board. The other is the prospect of an accelerating humanitarian crisis. . . .

That the Pentagon has been obliged to double its ground combat forces after only a week, and must now wait for them to deploy, is a matter for considerable political shock and awe. This military deceleration now runs directly counter to that other powerful dynamic: a quickening human tragedy. Put simply, the longer the war rages, the more acute the suffering of the Iraqi people will become. And while the regime remains undefeated, the more deeply problematic will be efforts to distribute aid and the more furious the international outcry. . . .

[E]ven with the best will in the world, aid efforts will have limited impact while the conflict continues inconclusively. This is why, with the war lengthening and slowing, Iraq's human crisis seems certain to intensify. This is the inexorably closing vice that has the power to destroy thousands of innocent lives and some very prominent political careers.

So how great is the risk for Blair? He has certainly made a massive withdrawal from the electorate's goodwill bank. . . .

Still, on its own, none of this yet amounts to the tremor that might trigger his downfall. For one thing, there is no opposition to exploit the opening. The Tories are weak and they back this war as much as the government: if it is a failure, they will be discredited too.

Inside Labour, there is anger to be sure. . . . But none of this yet has the makings of a coup against Blair. The rebels have no leader: Robin Cook would be a natural focus, but he has disavowed all such plotting. Heavyweights Gordon Brown and John Prescott have remained onside, ensuring cabinet unity even in these toughest of times. And, loyalist ministers point out, the wider Labour faithful are in no mood for ditching a proven vote-winner. "People looked over the precipice a couple of weeks ago," says one, recalling the brief moment when there was talk of dumping Blair, "and they took several large steps back."

Formal, self-deprecating, proper and precise, Blix has spent the last few months buffeted by the transatlantic diplomatic storms and emerged with the few hairs he has left on his head in place. Not for him an emotional response to the horrors of war that he believes, at least for now, could have been avoided. Offer him a range of adjectives to describe his mood at the breakdown of talks -- even as he argued that further inspections could still produce results - and he picks only "sadness" and "disappointment", not "anger" and "frustration".

"Sadness because now it was a matter of using force and destruction," he says. "Disappointment because I thought it was too early breaking off the attempts to achieve disarmament. I thought there should have been a little more patience." . . .

Yet despite the fact that there was little nobility displayed in the negotiations and that large numbers of the human race are perishing through military action despite his efforts, he does not regret picking up the phone to Kofi Annan four years ago while on an Antarctic cruise with his wife, and coming out of retirement to take on the job. "I was taken out of the refrigerator, literally," he said recently. "I have my career behind me."

The life ahead of him appears somewhat solitary. He lives in New York, his wife is in Sweden. At 74, he confesses to living the life of a "monk". His only indulgences are bordeaux and oriental carpets; his main hobbies, preparing Scandinavian fish dishes and making his own marmalade. . . .

Blix believes there was nothing he could have said that would have convinced the Americans not to go to war at this time. "They would have wanted a clear-cut guarantee that [the Iraqis] did not have weapons of mass destruction," he says. "I could not have given them a guarantee that if they had waited a few months more there would have been results."

So what was the point of it all, then? Of all the shuttling backwards and forwards, the weighing of words and the delivering of reports when so soon after his first report war seemed inevitable?

Blix's response is a masterpiece of the diplomatic understatement for which over a few short months he became a byword: "While we were disappointed that it didn't continue and that it came to war, I think we have shown that it was feasible to build up a professional and effective and independent inspection regime... it's just too bad it didn't work."

His inspectors are becoming valuable commodities for the United States but Hans Blix isn't. The chief U.N. inspector, blamed by Washington for hurting its drive for international support in the run-up to the war, will be stepping down at the end of June.

U.S. officials say his departure could make it easier for the Bush administration to include some of the world's top arms experts in their hunt for Iraqi weapons.

At least three members of Blix's staff -- two experts in biological weapons and one who specializes in Iraq's missile programs -- have been approached by special U.S. military units who will oversee Iraq's disarmament.

It's a sign of recognition that the inspectors are well-trained and their expertise is essential. But the Americans have not made any overtures to their boss. . . .

Blix's last major report was devastating for U.S. efforts to convince the council that Iraq was a serious threat that needed to be disarmed by force. . . .

The Americans were outraged.

"We gave him 70 sites to visit and he only went to seven," said one angry U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Blix said he couldn't remember how many sites he was given, but noted that intelligence from all countries including the United States resulted in "a relatively meager" amount of new information.

raq suffered another civilian tragedy and the invasion forces suffered another public relations disaster when an explosion in a crowded market area of Baghdad killed more than 50 people yesterday. It was the second incident of its kind within two days. A similar blast killed 14 people in a marketplace on Wednesday. . . . Whatever the actual cause, the damage to the US in terms of public opinion has already been done and will not be easily undone. TV stations - particularly the Arab satellite channels - showed pictures of the victims throughout the day, reinforcing the impression that the US is a greater immediate threat than Saddam Hussein.

The implications of a long war are serious. The case for military action was sold with the implication that it would be short and relatively bloodless. Even on that basis, George Bush and his award-winning salesman Tony Blair could not persuade world opinion that it was necessary. Now that they appear to accept that the fighting will last months rather than weeks, with all the likely consequences in blood and suffering, support for the war, although it may have increased briefly once British troops were engaged, could recede. . . .

This newspaper opposed the decision to go to war, not from pacifism but because the potential benefits of removing a dictator and neutralising a theoretical risk of his arming terrorists were outweighed by the horrendous costs of war. We were prepared to accept that, had Saddam been assassinated in the first, opportunistic bombing raid and his subordinates come out with their hands up, the costs and benefits would have been more balanced. Now, however, those costs seem heavier than ever.

This is not simply a matter of the immediate human cost in death, injury, grief and fear. That will be multiplied by an unknown factor as it is translated into anti-American sentiment throughout other Arab and Muslim countries. In Iraq, meanwhile, it is becoming clearer that the feelings of the people towards their self-appointed liberators are more ambivalent than was allowed for in the world -view of the American right. That means the post-war situation in Iraq will be less tractable, and more expensive, than expected.

The financial cost of war is growing daily. Mr Bush's request to Congress for $75bn -- seven times the GDP of Iraq -- assumed that the conflict would last 30 days. It may last longer, in which case the hole in budget arithmetic in the US and the UK will grow wider. As he rewrites next month's Budget speech, Gordon Brown must be alarmed by the war's effects on a service-based economy on the brink of recession.

Nor is there any prospect that the costs of this war will be shared with the "plenty" of allies of which the President boasted unconvincingly. In 1991, nine-tenths of the costs of the Gulf War were borne by countries other than the US. This time, the coalition of the willing is not a coalition of the willing-to-pay.

The Government apologised yesterday to the families of two dead British soldiers over claims by Tony Blair that the men had been "executed" by Iraqi militiamen.

Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, expressed "regret" for any distress caused by the Prime Minister's condemnation of a broadcast on al-Jazeera television which showed the men's bodies.

Mr Ingram's apology is a serious embarrassment for Mr Blair, who highlighted the deaths of the soldiers during his press conference on Thursday with George Bush at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

So much has changed in this Arab world since the last Gulf War. The arrival of satellite television stations such as Al-Jazeera has transformed the information landscape: the agenda is no longer dominated by Western news outlets or by the craven and awful state-controlled media. Hour by hour, Arab families follow the progress of this war, and it is being mediated for them by Arab reporters. The information war is being lost in the Arab world, partly because the old sources of information no longer hold sway, and at least partly because nobody here wants to give the coalition the benefit of the doubt.

[Tony Blair] is fighting a barely legitimate war that is already a military and diplomatic quagmire, where even eventual victory may not avert a political disaster. He knows his capacity to survive the diplomatic humiliations piled on him by the Bush administration is limited; you cannot long lead Britain's centre and centre-left from such a compromised position, wounding not only the country's profoundest interests but torching any linkage with the progressive project. For the first time his premiership is genuinely at risk.

It is a political tragedy, Shakespearean in the cruelty of its denouement. 9/11 accelerated trends in America that had been crystallising since the 1970s and which made the political structures in which successive British Governments have managed simultaneously to play both the American and European cards unsustainable. Blair was confronted with an invidious choice that nobody in the British establishment has wanted to make: Europe or America. Side with Europe to insist that the price of collaboration in the fight against terrorism had to be that the US observe genuinely multilateral international due process - and certainly say No to some of Washington's wilder aims. Or side with America insisting from the inside that it engaged in its wars multilaterally, and hope to bring Europe along in your wake.

Either choice was beset with risk, but it's hard to believe that siding with Europe, for all its evident difficulties, would have produced an outcome worse than the situation in which we currently find ourselves: a protracted war with no second UN Resolution, no commitment to UN governance of post-war Iraq, no commitment to a mid-East peace settlement. But Blair misread the character of American conservatism, its grip on the American body politic and its scope for rationality. He continues to do so, the miscalculation of his life.

Jay Garner, the retired US general who will oversee humanitarian relief and reconstruction in postwar Iraq, is president of an arms company that provides crucial technical support to missile systems vital to the US invasion of the country.

Garner's business background is causing serious concerns at the United Nations and among aid agencies, who are already opposed to US administration of Iraq if it comes outside UN authority, and who say appointment of an American linked to the arms trade is the 'worst case scenario' for running the country after the war.

Garner is president of Virginia-based SY Coleman, a subsidiary of defence electronics group L-3 Communications, which provides technical services and advice on the Patriot missile system being used in Iraq. Patriot was made famous in the 1991 Gulf war when it was used to protect Israeli and Saudi targets from attack by Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles. Garner was involved in the system's deployment in Israel. . . .

Jack Tyler, an SY Coleman senior vice-president, confirmed that Garner still held his position at the company.

Ten days into a war fought under the flag of disarmament, U.S.-led troops have found no substantial sign of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In some ways, that is unsurprising. The war is far from won, and most of Iraq's covert arms production and storage historically have taken place within a 60-mile radius of Baghdad. That is roughly the forward line of U.S. armored columns in their thrust to the Iraqi capital.

At the same time, U.S. forces have tested 10 of their best intelligence leads, four that first day and another half-dozen since, without result. There are nearly 300 sites in the top tier of a much larger list that the Defense Intelligence Agency updated in the run-up to war, officials said. The 10 sites reached by Friday were among the most urgent. If equipped as suspected, they would have posed an immediate threat to U.S. forces. "All the searches have turned up negative," said a Joint Staff officer who is following field reports. "The munitions that have been found have all been conventional." . . .

Bush administration officials are acutely aware that their declared war aims call for an early display of evidence. John S. Wolf, assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, recently said that the seventh floor of the State Department -- where Secretary Colin L. Powell and other top political appointees work -- was keen on swift discovery of a "smoking gun," according to someone present.

"The president has made very clear that the reason why we are in Iraq is to find weapons of mass destruction," Wolf said in a telephone interview yesterday. He added, "The fact that we haven't found them in seven or eight days doesn't faze me one little bit. Very clearly, we need to find this stuff or people are going to be asking questions."

AMMAN, Jordan -- Four busloads of Iraqi men left this city Tuesday for their homeland to join the fight against American-led invaders, a sign that U.S. and British forces may face opposition from ordinary Iraqis as well as from supporters of Saddam Hussein.

Few of the men said they were interested in keeping Saddam in power. Instead they talked about fighting for their communities, their families and their pride. They said they would not join the Iraqi military but would use their personal weapons to fight Americans. . . .

Jordanian officials said 4,330 Iraqis have returned to Iraq in the last 10 days, 429 in the last day. In contrast, no Iraqis fled to Jordan as refugees since the war began.

Although the numbers may not seem large, they underscore the growing sense of pride and admiration that is being expressed in this Arab capital for the way Iraqis have so far resisted American and British troops. Some analysts suggest that the return of Iraqis to their homeland also portends difficulties for the United States as it attempts to take control of Iraq and install a new government.

What is as dangerous as the daily bombardment of Baghdad is the call by Tony Blair and George Bush on the Shi'ites in Basra and Baghdad to rise up. It is one thing to call for a popular uprising, it is quite another to urge this religious sect to rise up. The implication is that the other sect, the Sunnis, who form some 40% of the population, not only support the Iraqi regime but are implicated in its crime. It seems that Mr Blair and Mr Bush are determined to ferment religious divisions and sectarian conflict. This can only play into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who wish to turn Iraq into another Afghanistan. But then, it was the US that supported and armed Osama bin Laden in the first place. So, no change there.

The political history that has shaped Iraq created a shared political awareness among the population - especially those in the cities - that is mutually acknowledged without having to be spoken. An awareness engendered by decades of tyranny and oppression. Such political awareness makes the attempt by the US and Britain to coax Iraqis into loving the invader laughable. The manner in which the politicians and the military explain how they intend to win the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi population is reminiscent of anthropologists' attempt to make contact with a previously undiscovered community in the deepest jungles of Brazil or Chile. It is modelled on the way wild animals are trained for a circus act, with a whip in one hand and a lump of sugar in the other. It is not only deeply offensive, it is profoundly racist. . . .

The last thing the Middle East needs is another war in addition to the war the Israeli government is waging against the Palestinian people. Just how many wars can a single region sustain at any one time? In what must be the most unconvincing and clumsy attempt to pacify Arab and world opinion, Mr Bush experienced a sudden and a very convenient conversion to Mr Blair's road map. If the road map had any credibility at all, it lost it the instant Mr Bush gave it his endorsement. It should surprise no one if the road map is seen as the road to nowhere.

Egypt's president said he could not stop U.S.-led warships from crossing the Suez Canal toward Iraq, and warned a drawn out war would lead to increased Islamic militancy throughout the world.

"If there is one (Osama) bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens afterward," Hosni Mubarak said in reference to the al-Qaida terror network leader during a speech to army commanders in the city of Suez, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of the capital, Cairo.

Mubarak also warned that the war would have "catastrophic" effects on global economic, political and humanitarian conditions and that all Mideast states, including Israel, should be free of weapons of mass destruction.

Although Saddam Hussein's regime is largely secular, religious militants throughout the region will probably make strenuous efforts over the coming months to "Islamise" the conflict - as happened during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group yesterday issued a statement announcing "the good news" that the first of its suicide bombers had arrived in Baghdad. Because of the extremely tight security in Israel, American and British troops in Iraq are likely to become an easier and more attractive target for the foreseeable future.

On at least six occasions . . . [a senior military] planner told me, when Rumsfeld and his deputies were presented with operational plans -- the Iraqi assault was designated Plan 1003 -- he insisted that the number of ground troops be sharply reduced. Rumsfeld's faith in precision bombing and his insistence on streamlined military operations has had profound consequences for the ability of the armed forces to fight effectively overseas. "They've got no resources," a former high-level intelligence official said. "He was so focussed on proving his point -- that the Iraqis were going to fall apart." . . .

In the planner's view, Rumsfeld had two goals: to demonstrate the efficacy of precision bombing and to "do the war on the cheap." Rumsfeld and his two main deputies for war planning, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, "were so enamored of 'shock and awe' that victory seemed assured," the planner said. "They believed that the weather would always be clear, that the enemy would expose itself, and so precision bombings would always work." . . .

In the months leading up to the war, a split developed inside the military, with the planners and their immediate superiors warning that the war plan was dangerously thin on troops and matériel, and the top generals -- including General Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, and Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- supporting Rumsfeld. After Turkey's parliament astonished the war planners in early March by denying the United States permission to land the 4th Infantry Division in Turkey, Franks initially argued that the war ought to be delayed until the troops could be brought in by another route, a former intelligence official said. "Rummy overruled him." . . .

There were reports last week that Iraqi exiles, including fervent Shiites, were crossing into Iraq by car and bus from Jordan and Syria to get into the fight on the side of the Iraqi government. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. Middle East operative, told me in a telephone call from Jordan, "Everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq. Not Saddam. They've been given the high sign, and we are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties a day and they die by the thousands, they're still winning. It's a jihad, and it's a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war." There were press reports of mujahideen arriving from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Algeria for "martyrdom operations." . . .

A Middle East businessman who has long-standing ties in Jordan and Syria -- and whose information I have always found reliable -- told me that the religious government in Tehran "is now backing Iraq in the war. There isn't any Arab fighting group on the ground in Iraq who is with the United States," he said.

There is also evidence that Turkey has been playing both sides. Turkey and Syria, who traditionally have not had close relations, recently agreed to strengthen their ties, the businessman told me, and early this year Syria sent Major General Ghazi Kanaan, its longtime strongman and power broker in Lebanon, to Turkey. The two nations have begun to share intelligence and to meet, along with Iranian officials, to discuss border issues, in case an independent Kurdistan emerges from the Iraq war. A former U.S. intelligence officer put it this way: "The Syrians are coöaut;rdinating with the Turks to screw us in the north -- to cause us problems." He added, "Syria and the Iranians agreed that they could not let an American occupation of Iraq stand."

Last Wednesday, CIA officials gave a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill about the rising tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the Arab world. Particular emphasis was placed on Jordan and Egypt. As agency officials discussed the depth of hatred for U.S. actions, the senators fell silent. There were delicate discussions about the uncertainty, if the war was protracted, of "regime stability." After the briefing, "there were senators who were ashen-faced," said one staff member. "They were absolutely depressed." Much of what the agency briefed would not have been news to any close watcher of the BBC or almost any foreign news broadcast. "But they [the senators] only watch American TV," said the staffer. Most of the senators had been led to believe that the war would be quick and that the Iraqi populace would be dancing in the streets. It is hard to know the true level of discontent in the Arab world, and whether it can turn into revolution. But an extended and increasingly bloody Iraqi war is a risky way to find out.