THE COLLAPSE.(Iraq War)

Jon Lee Anderson on the state of Baghdad just before the coalition troops entered the city

An archive of NewYorker.com's coverage of the war in Iraq

Photographs of Baghdad the day the American troops took control of the city

A portfolio of photographs of the fight for the Iraqi capital

Photographs of Baghdad taken before the coalition troops entered the city

The battle for the Republican Palace complex on Monday, April 7th, the day the first American tanks appeared in the center of Baghdad, had a symphonic quality. Much of it was boom and bang--heavy concussive thumps from tank fire and bombs, the ripping bursts of rockets--but there was also a rhythmic noise, like a huge steel drum being pounded, and, frequently, a great grinding sound. The light clatter of automatic-weapons fire joined in now and then underneath it all. I was watching the battle from the balcony of a room at the Sheraton Hotel, on the east bank of the Tigris, across the river from the palace grounds, which cover hundreds of acres in central Baghdad. Several times, I heard a loud crackling, like metallic popcorn popping--ammunition dumps exploding. F-18 fighter jets, which had replaced the B-52s that had been dropping bombs on Baghdad for two weeks, hit the palace area and screamed off again. The grinding noise was coming from the guns of low-flying A-10 Warthogs, firing four thousand bullets per minute.

Oil fires had been set on the sandy embankment of the river just opposite the hotel, and by mid-morning black smoke was billowing toward us. Just about then a new dust storm, a turab, started up, and the smoke and the dust melded into a yellow haze that obscured the battle, which continued for most of the day. The Minister of Information, Muhammad Said Al Sahaf, gave a surreal press conference in the Palestine Hotel, next door. He claimed that "there are no American infidels in Baghdad,"and said that journalists, particularly those from Al Jazeera, were lying about what they saw. He spoke with bonhomie and apparent conviction. I assume he believed that we were not so different from the citizens of Iraq, who had long since lost the ability to call a lie a lie, or to contradict anything they were told by officials. A bus tour for the press corps was organized, and we drove down Sadoun Street, parallel to the Tigris but out of sight of American tanks. The city was pretty much deserted, except for a few fighters here and there, most of them in civilian clothes, with red-and-white checked head scarves. Some of the men carried rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They flashed us the V sign. The tour lasted only about ten minutes, and I was told that it was to demonstrate that the Ministry of Information hadn't been taken.