Thought police melt away

For the first time in the 48 days since I arrived in Iraq there was something different about Baghdad today. It was the sense of calm. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the 3rd Battalion of the 4th US Marines was camped all round the Palestine Hotel where I have lived for the last seven weeks.

But perhaps the most striking difference was the removal of the claustrophobic grip of Saddam's thought police. No longer will we have to play the game of hide-and-seek with Iraqi minders, intelligence officers and various spooks.

Not only are the people of Iraq free to begin to plan new lives but also the journalists who have remained through the bombing are free.

From the moment each one of us entered Iraq we were closely monitored. A file was kept of everything we wrote, every person we interviewed, every place we visited. Hotel rooms, personal and professional belongings were searched, frequently items disappeared from our rooms.

We don't know if the rooms in the hotels - first the Al Rashid, then the Al Hamra and now the Palestine - were bugged with audio or video equipment. We just assumed they were and behaved accordingly.

Every time we walked out of our rooms an Iraqi was suddenly present. In the lobby of each hotel were men with scowling faces, classically reading newspapers. Wherever we went, either on foot or by car, we were followed by no fewer than two of these "goons".

The men from the ministry of information were our keepers. They granted - or more frequently refused - permission to visit some place or interview some person. Not that we ever asked for anything as blatantly newsworthy as visiting the appalling jails where Saddam kept his prisoners or his political enemies. Just simple stuff, like meeting people in the street.

That was normally approved but was always conducted by a governmentapproved translator. Yet it seemed strange that in every conversation gushing praise of Saddam Hussein always flowed - even if we hadn't asked about him.

"You want something, you must give money," my driver Mahmoud instructed me. It was plain and simple corruption which permeated down from the very top of the Iraqi regime and never stopped until it landed in the gutter. "To get the pleasure of the ministry of information you must pay $150 each day," was another starting point. And an extra $100 a day for the pleasure of using your own Satellite telephone.

We were warned by various Iraqis who had become friends that gangs were planning to raid our hotel. We had already started to hide valuables when the marines showed up.