I don't think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that's now history.

What is a television apparatus to man who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

I stayed in Baghdad every summer until I was 14. My dad's sister is still there but many of my relatives have managed to get out. People forget that there are still people there who are not radicalized in any particular direction trying to live normal lives in a very difficult situation.

The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year he said there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad.

My dad was working abroad in Iraq and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him in Baghdad off and on. For the first ten years of my life we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.

Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government education and other services for the people of Iraq.