When confidence meets cataclysm.

BAGHDAD (Iraq); IRAQ

Discusses civilian life in Baghdad, Iraq during the Iraqi War. Two weeks into the bombing of Baghdad, more and more people were itching to get back to normal. And this despite the fact that explosions, caused either by United States or British missiles or by misfired Iraqi anti-aircraft rockets, have killed at least 79 people in two Baghdad markets since the war began. How long supplies in and to the city will last depends, of course, on whether the Americans and British really will encircle it. Meanwhile, Iraqi television is showing morale-boosting videos of a choir that travels round Baghdad, recording songs at various places every day. The conclusion that Baghdadis are beginning to draw from all this is that their government has shrewdly wrong-footed the coalition forces.