At half past one this morning, the "White Devils" began operation "Valiant Strike". The Iraqi army's reprisals for American attacks? No. The beginning of the Kurdish opposition's resistance to Saddam? No. A renewed American offensive in the South East of Afghanistan. Slipped gracefully in at the tail end of some of the more thorough morning bulletins, the news that under the dark cover of war in another part of the land of turbans and beards, the shiny troops of the USA are (still!) upholding freedom and democracy by terrorising the countryside of another damaged land.

Will this be the scenario in Iraq in a year's time - US crack troop still searching for the elusive moustachioed despot, suspicious of every hapless, beret-wearing Iraqi? By then the willing gaze of the TV cameras will have gone, tired of having incoherent reports mumbled through gas masks. Shi'a resistance fighters and Kurdish warlords do not make nearly as good telly as Yankee marines in Ray-Bans or "our boys" in their funny floppy hats do. What happens when the TV war stops? What happens when the ratings slide? Things either tail off or pick up. Can we rely on Auntie BBC and her lecherous second cousin ITV to let us know which it is?
Lets just hope - pray - that by some divinely precise bomb, they do get Saddam, and soon.