John Fisk writes:

SADDAM HUSSEIN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - So where are

the Americans? I

prowled the empty departure lounges, mooched through

the abandoned

customs department, chatted to the seven armed militia

guards, met the

airport director and stood beside the runways where

two dust-covered Iraqi

Airways passenger jets -- an old 727 and an even more

elderly Antonov --

stood forlornly on the runway not far from an equally

decrepit military

helicopter.And all I could hear was the distant whisper of

high-flying jets and

the chatter of the flocks of birds which have nested

near the airport car

park on this, the first day of real summer in Baghdad.


Only three hours earlier, the BBC had reported claims

that forward

units of an American mechanised infantry division were

less than 16km west

of Baghdad -- and that some US troops had taken up

positions on the

very edge of the international airport.



But I was 27km west of the city.



And there were no Americans, no armour, not a soul

around the runways

of the airport whose namesake, in poster form, sat

nonchalantly in the

arrivals lounge in a business suit, cigar in hand.

Even more

astonishingly, there was no sign of the 12,000

Republican Guards whom the US

division expected to fight.



Indeed, Saddam Hussein International Airport looked as

if it was

enduring an industrial strike (let us not conceive of

such an event in

Saddam's Iraq) rather than an imminent takeover by the

world's only

superpower.



Was it true, the Iraqi minister of information was

asked at his daily

2pm press conference (11pm NZT) - a routine

institution of usually

deadly tedium - that the Americans were at the

airport?



"Rubbish!" he shouted. "Lies! Go and look for

yourself."



So we did.