Oh, the humanity!
The wife and I were channel-surfing between various news sources last night looking for bit of an update on Iraq. BBC had a nature show on. Sky News was doing an Aussie news replay, CNBC was on the weather, so we settled on CNN, which had a satellite interview going on with a reporter in Kuwait. Promising stuff, you'd think, 'man-on-the-ground', 'finger-on-the-pulse' and all that. Where are the troops at? What do the locals think of the upcoming hostilities? What's the average muslim's position on the future of the Kurds in Northern Iraq?

But no. Conversation turned to various groups who were 'fleeing' Kuwait in expectation of Iraqi reprisals. 'Fleeing' for me, has always conjured up images of running from the house with nothing but the shirt on your back, but this was very orderly fleeing: bags neatly packed, house windows taped up and sandbagged in case of bombing, gas turned off, the electricity cancelled, and, of course, the pets get taken to a shelter (too much of a nuisance taking fluffy through quarantine for a war that might only last a couple of weeks, after all). And that was the angle of the story. The pets! Oh, the humanity! They'd trucked the CNN news team down to the animal shelter to film all the poor cats and dogs and birds that had been deserted by their 'fleeing' owners. It was, as the sombre voice-over told us, yet another example of the 'unseen suffering' caused by the Iraq crisis.

Now, of course, I don't watch CNN every hour of the day, so I expect there were plenty of worthy reports regarding the upcoming conflict and likely aftermath: I'm sure the CNN audience are sick to death of reports on the likely oppression of the Kurds should the Turks be given 'responsibility' over Northern Iraq; the probable bloodbath when the majority Shia muslims finally get to have a go at the Saddam's Baath mob; and the role of depleted uranium munitions, which are even more radioactive than the type used in the 1991 war (and which caused cancer in thousands in the years after the conflict).

But this was just insane. We're into the last 24 hours before Bush's 'Saddam-must-leave' ultimatum expires, and CNN are doing fluffy animal stories.
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