"The American war on Saddam Hussein exploded tonight in a ferocious display of precision bombing and cruise missile strikes that blasted the heart of the Iraqi ruler's power with a spectacular opening bulls-eye on his most forbidding palace and continued with at least 100 more devastating volleys in the first two hours."

"Amid the staccato of the bomb blasts and the metallic whoosh of the cruise missiles as they roared low across the city before striking their targets with a deafening roar, only one ambulance siren could be heard, and then only briefly."

"On the deserted roads, no fire engines could be seen. Any survivors in the buildings appeared to have been left to their fates."

"At 9 p.m. precisely, with the city's streets almost deserted and an ominous silence reaching to the horizon, the attack began. In an instant, the Republican Palace was a sea of fire and rising pillars of smoke lit with a spangling of brightly burning debris."

"Viewed from across the river, successive strikes turned the hundreds of acres of palace grounds and their carefully manicured palm trees into a stadium of light, as though war had finally begun to reveal some of the secrets of one of the most forbidden places in Iraq."