BAGHDAD, 22 March 2003 — Yesterday was the day of the paperclips. Back in 1945, they say that as the first Soviet tanks roared down the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin, German civil servants in a neighboring building were working out the Third Reich paperclip ration for 1946. No one had looked out of the window.

And in Baghdad yesterday, the paperclips actually lay in their countless hundreds on office desks, along with pins and old binders and computer instructions, pro-forma papers and card index racks. The files are long gone, along with the computers, the glass desktops, the books and the government art that always adorns Baath party offices.

Just across the road, almost in view of the villa’s windows, an annex of the Iraqi Planning Ministry was still smoldering after its destruction by cruise missiles a few hours earlier. But Saddam’s ministers know how to deal with the day of the paperclips. Iraq will fight on. The invading armies are mercenaries. Not a single Iraqi soldier has surrendered. The Americans tried to murder Saddam’s family — and they failed. The Anglo-American mercenary army will meet defeat. Indeed, Saddam has himself offered a range of rewards for individual acts of courage by his troops, of which more later.

So now let’s go back to the day of the paperclips. The scene: a villa annex of the Ministry of Information on the banks of the Tigris River, presided over by a framed portrait of Saddam Hussein. The time: just after 1 p.m., as the world’s satellite television stations were announcing the imminent capture of Um Qasr port by US Marines, the accidental crash of a US helicopter with 12 lives lost, and showing pictures of men in Iraqi uniforms surrendering to British troops. The characters: Mohamed Said Al-Sahaf, the bespectacled Iraqi minister of information, and Mahmoud Diab Al-Ahmed, the Iraqi minister of interior who is holding a silver-painted Kalashnikov rifle in his right hand. Attendant lords: more than a hundred Iraqi and foreign journalists.

Journalist: Is it true the Americans are about to capture Um Qasr?

Al-Sahaf: They admitted that they didn’t go to Um Qasr and that they had failed to capture it. They say they have gone a hundred miles into the desert and they are lying to you. They have showed a tape and it shows only a desert.

Journalist: But they are in Iraq!

Al-Sahaf: Are they? We don’t know. Are they?

Journalist: Are you worried?

Al-Sahaf: Not at all. Not at all. I think they are frightened. We have destroyed two of their aircraft. We don’t judge things by the first day, the second day. We know them very well since their wide-scale aggression of 1991. We know their tricks, their tactics. We know that our morale and the morale of our armed forces are not dependent on this or that. Our morale is in our resilience, in our good understanding of the situation, in our deep belief that we are the just side and they are the villains. We are fighting against mercenaries and criminals.

Journalist: What about the Iraqis taken prisoner?

Al-Sahaf: There is nothing in this, not at all. They are not Iraqi soldiers, they are not members of the Iraqi armed forces. They are just some people in the hands of the British.

And so it went on. The most important part of Al-Sahaf’s peroration was an expression of his moral horror that the Americans should have tried to assassinate Saddam on Thursday morning. He provided photographs of wounded Iraqi civilians — they were pinned to a drawing board behind him — who were also the victims of “these villains in Washington and London.” And all the while, Al-Ahmed watched in silence, his silver Kalashnikov dangling from his right hand or resting on his right shoulder, his ammunition belt threaded around a khaki flak-jacket.

The script continued, fit for any performance of Macbeth. “They also targeted the family of Saddam Hussein,” Al-Sahaf said. “They targeted them, but God has protected them. His own family! But they are safe. This is a game. This is the Devil. This is a complete disgrace. They are a superpower of villains, they are a superpower of Al Capone. He (Bush) is the official tyrant of America. The Devil is in the White House. We will continue to capture these villains, these mercenaries. He will face this tragedy.”

Al-Ahmed spoke more quietly. A former minister of irrigation — and one who they say was often hard at work far from his office — he dealt even more briskly with the preposterous idea that Um Qasr might fall. “This is silly talk. Um Qasr is an Iraqi port and is going to remain an Iraqi port. It will be hard for them to take it.”

From time to time, Al-Ahmed lifted his silver rifle to rest it meaningfully across his shoulder as the camera auto-drives purred. “We don’t want to kill the people of America and Britain, we don’t have a problem with them, but they got a first taste of what to expect when 12 of them were incinerated.”

And now for Saddam’s latest reward. Unfortunately, it is being offered in the ever-declining Iraqi dinar; but it goes like this. For the downing of an American or British aircraft: 100 million Iraqi dinars (30,810 pounds sterling). For the capture of an American or British soldier: 15, 405 pounds. For the killing of an American or British soldier: 7,703 pounds. Which shows how much the Iraqis would value a prisoner — with all its propaganda uses — rather than a dead enemy soldier.