Robert Fisk: Baghdad feels power's wrath

It was like a door slamming deep beneath the surface of the Earth, a pulsating, minute-long roar of sound that brought US President George W. Bush's supposed crusade against "terrorism" to Baghdad.

There was a thrashing of tracers on the horizon from the Baghdad air defences - the World War II-era firepower of old Soviet anti-aircraft guns - and then a series of tremendous vibrations that had the ground shaking under our feet.

Bubbles of fire tore into the sky around the Iraqi capital, dark red at the base, golden at the top.

Saddam, of course, has vowed to fight to the end but in Baghdad, there was a truly Valhalla quality about the violence.

Within minutes, looking out across the Tigris River, I could see pinpricks of fire as bombs and cruise missiles exploded on to Iraq's military and communications centres and, no doubt, upon the innocent as well.

The first of the latter, a taxi driver, was blown to pieces in the first American raid on Baghdad. No one here doubted that the dead would include civilians.

British Premier Tony Blair said just that in the House of Commons debate this week but I wondered, listening to this storm of fire across Baghdad, if he has any conception of what it looks like, feels like, or of the fear of those innocent Iraqis who are, as I write this, cowering in their homes and basements.

I had talked to an old Shia Muslim lady in a poor area of Baghdad, dressed in traditional black with a white veil on her head. I pressed her as to what she felt. In the end, she just said: "I am afraid."

That this is the start of something that will change the face of the Middle East is in little doubt; that it will be successful in the long term is quite another matter.

The sheer violence of it - the howl of air raid sirens and the air-cutting fall of the missiles - carried its own political message; not just to Saddam but the world.

We are the superpower, those explosions said. This is how we do business. This is how we take our revenge for September 11.

Not even Mr Bush made any pretence in the last days of peace to link Iraq with those international crimes against humanity. But some of the fire in the darkness around Baghdad reminded me of those flames at the World Trade Centre.

In a strange way, the Americans were - without the permission of the United Nations, with most of the world against them - acting out their rage.

Iraq, of course, cannot withstand this for long. Saddam claims his soldiers can defeat technology with courage. I doubt it.

For what fell upon Iraq - and I witnessed just an infinitely small part of this festival of violence - was as militarily awesome as it was politically terrifying.

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Herald Feature: Iraq