"FBI and other federal officials in NJ outline Homeland Security's "Red Alert" response: it will mean Martial Law... If the nation escalates to "red alert," which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home, the state's anti-terror czar says."

"A couple of weeks ago journalists were exasperated by that fact that Iraqis just went on with their lives and did not panic, well today there is a very different picture. It is actually a bit scary and very disturbing... Wherever you go you see closed shops and it is not just doors-locked closed but sheet-metal-welded-on-the-front closed, windows-removed-and-built-with-bricks closed, doors were being welded shut... Houses which are still being built are having huge walls erected in front of them with no doors, to make sure they don?t get used as barracks I guess..."

"A couple of hours earlier we were at a shop and a woman said as she was leaving, and this is a very common sentence, "we'll see you tomorrow if good keeps us alive" " itha allah khalana taibeen " and the whole place just freezes. She laughed nervously and said she didn't mean that, and we all laughed but these things start having a meaning beyond being figures of speech..."

"Thursday, March 20, 2003 - air raid sirens in baghdad but the only sounds you can here are the anti-aircraft machine guns. will go now - :: salam 5:46 AM"

a baghdad blog