The lobby of the Palestine Hotel, which for the past week has been home for most of the foreign press corps in Baghdad, is a bleak and sinister place. Each passerby is scrutinised by plainclothes officials to trace any subversive intent. The usual crowd of ruling party activists and secret police in black leather jackets are here on March 24 too, but instead of observing the reporters, they watch TV, entranced by the image of a crippled American Apache helicopter lying in a field near Karbala in southern Iraq.

PYRRHIC VICTORY: Iraqis celebrate the downing of a US Apache helicopter purported to be felled by a farmer with his hunting rifle

Their joy turns to ecstasy when a correspondent of the state-controlled TV thrusts his microphone towards the bewildered farmer, identified as Ali Obaid Mingash, and asks how he had shot down the hi-tech helicopter with a hunting rifle. Never mind that it would take an awfully lucky shot to bring down the chopper. The crowd erupts in cheers anyway. "The old man shot it down! The old man shot it down!" one of the leather-clad spies exclaims, his eyes wide with wonder.

CNN calls the war the "Showdown with Iraq", but Iraq's state-controlled media has opted for the more apocalyptic "Battle of Final Reckoning". And if one were to believe the state-run TV and radio, the outcome of Armageddon has shifted decidedly in Baghdad's favour.

Never mind the eye-smarting smoke from the burning oil fires that fills the skies above the Iraqi capital. Never mind the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division that is only 160 km to the south. Or the shock waves from exploding cruise missiles and 2,000-pound bombs that roll over the city night and day. After four days of war, the message on Iraqi TV is even more muscular: the "invincible" Americans are mortal, after all. They can be captured, killed and defeated. Pictures of downed helicopters, along with dead and imprisoned US soldiers, have proved a boon for Iraq's two TV stations as they seek to reassure and embolden the people who are in a limbo, caught between a beleaguered past and an uncertain future.

BURNING AMBITION: One of Saddam's palace compounds takes the brunt of the March 21 air assault on the Iraqi capital

BURDEN OF war: An Iraqi carries the remains of a missile out of a school yard that was rocked by explosions

The stations' usual programming consists mainly of paeans to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nationhood ("Our wounds cry out/And the Al-Aqsa Mosque grieves/Oh woe! Oh woe!"). Six-to-eight-minute videos feature crooners singing of their love for Saddam and footage of the Iraqi leader officiating over his enraptured flock. To the western eyes, the singers look like dodgy Vegas lounge acts fit only for the 4-6 a.m. time slot, but Saddam has made them stars and regards the videos as an important political tool. A Government minister who pulled some of them off the air in the early 1990s was forced to flee into exile.

To be sure, sometimes the media operation appears a tad too slick. Within an hour of voting in last year's referendum, a pre-recorded video was aired with a quartet of women warbling, "A hundred per cent! A hundred per cent!" Needless to say, when the votes were tallied, Saddam had won with 100 per cent vote. Still, during the initial hours of the war, Saddam appeared ruffled and haggard, and the videos pitifully inadequate. But the Government's well-oiled propaganda machine has regained its footing, thanks to the US setbacks. The Iraqi leader is now referred to as "Field Marshall President Saddam Hussein".

What has also helped is that the Iraqi leadership has rediscovered its rhetorical flair after the initial halting steps. Non-Arab press accounts of developments in Iraq usually launder the statements of Iraqi officials to make them more readable for the western people. A random sample of official statements and news conferences carried by the Iraqi TV in the past two days explains it. Like a drawer full of single socks, it is a mix-and-match lexicon that can numb the outsider's mind. The US and British troops are the "criminal units", "forces of imperialism and aggression", "colonialist, aggressor imperialists", "international terrorist war criminals", and "war criminal mercenaries". Iraqis are always "peace-loving" unless, of course, they are facing the "aggressors", in which case they are "fierce fighters" raising the "flag of jehad and the flag of Iraq". Iraqis never die in battle; they are "martyred". And Israel, of course, is not Israel but the "Zionist entity".

As the battle for Baghdad draws near, it is not clear whether the stale videos and refuelled rhetoric will inspire the Iraqis to fight off the "colonialist, aggressor imperialists". However, one thing is certain. The myth of the Farmer and the Hunting Gun has been born. Cars driving past the Ministry of Information honk their horns to celebrate the farmer's trophy, and some passengers stick halfway out of their car windows to wave "V" for victory signs at passersby. Salim Aref is one of the newly inspired Iraqis. Standing only metres away from the crater created by an exploding US bomb near Baghdad's Mustansiriya University, the 42-year-old office clerk and part-time student is glowing. He saw Mingash on TV and walked away ready to fight. "I'm proud. I now believe we'll win," he says.

Only a day earlier, Baghdadis had been in a daze.

A half-dozen men stood mesmerised on the kerb of the Hunting Club street, their eyes glued to the horizon as if they were watching an angry storm march across the sky above the broad mid-western plain. Instead, they saw a vision of hell.

BUSTED VANITY: Saddam's statue survives the attack on one of his gaudy palaces in Yarmouk district even as the portico lies in ruins

RAGE OF ANGELS: Armed Iraqi women along with their children shout anti-US slogans near Yousifiya, 30 km south of Baghdad

The Iraqi capital was encircled by up to 20 soaring pillars of inky black smoke billowing from trenches of burning oil. After a night of devastating attacks and with Iraqi air defences appearing increasingly porous, Saddam's regime turned for deterrent to one commodity that Iraq has plenty of-oil. But as the smoke drifted through the skies and a premature darkness enveloped the sprawling city, there was no evidence that it had disrupted the US-led coalition's arsenal of laser-guided bombs and missiles. Air strikes continued intermittently all day in the first daylight raids in the campaign to topple Saddam. Air-raid sirens, however, seldom blared before the one-tonne bombs struck their targets, echoing with a resounding thud across the city.

Gazing at the towering plumes of smoke, Abdul Razak and his five neighbours in Baghdad's Mansour district, shook their heads in dismay. Oil was always a symbol of Iraq's strength. Now, ironically, it seemed to be a sign of its increasing desperation and weakness as US and British warplanes and missiles appeared to hammer Iraqi targets at will. "We'll take care of our families and homes. But did you see those missiles last night? Did you hear those bombs? What can burning oil do?" asked the 55-year-old Razak.

"Operation Iraqi Freedom" opened last week with a failed attempt to kill Saddam by bombing a private residence in southern Baghdad where he is thought to have been holed up with his top leadership. The assault continued with several brief air strikes that, while damaging, left many war-weary Baghdadis confident the morning after that they would prevail. But on the night of March 21, the US unleashed its military might with more than two hours of deafening bombardment that sent flames mushrooming into the air and lit the sky above the Iraqi capital. Bombs struck southern Baghdad again before dawn, jolting the people from their beds.

The raids underscored the coalition's air superiority, dramatically in the case of Saddam's gaudy palace in Yarmouk district, one of at least a dozen Xanadus the Iraqi leader has in Baghdad. The missile entered the palace's upper-floor portico and ignited a fire that gutted the shrine to Saddam's power and vanity. On Saturday morning, twisted and charred metal jutted from the windows, though the four 20-ft-high bronze busts of the Iraqi leader atop the residence were still intact.

Like the acrid smoke that settled on Baghdad, the night attack gave some Iraqis the first whiff of the regime's weakness. It cast doubt on the semi-official line that Iraqis could withstand anything because under Saddam they had suffered everything-including two devastating wars and 12 years of UN-imposed economic sanctions. "This is real war now. There's no more joking," said one middle-aged man, who for fear of safety spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Iraqis thought they had seen everything, but the 1991 war was a laugh compared to this." While some Iraqis said they had prayed all night in the darkness of their homes, the man said he had spent the night trying in vain to calm his terrified wife and three children. "My son kept saying, 'Make it stop, Papa.' But what can I do?"

CARCASS COUNT: Iraqis rush to cover one of the 15 bodies burnt beyond recognition on the streets of Baghdad

Not surprisingly, Iraqi authorities brushed off the latest battlefield setbacks. With a bravado that was extraordinary even by official Iraqi standards, Abdel Razak Hashimi, a senior adviser to the Iraqi President, goaded coalition forces to continue their march across southern Iraq. "It is flat and there's nothing but desert. Let them move. They will never achieve their objective," he said.

By resorting to oil burning, however, the Iraqis were employing any and every measure to slow the US-led onslaught and stem the battering Baghdad was receiving from the air. Iraq's military is believed to have learnt the oil-burning tactic from its Serb counterpart, with whom it has had ties for long. Belgrade believed that the large amount of smoke in the air during the 1999 NATO-led war against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had reduced the effectiveness of US' hi-tech weaponry by diffusing the laser beams often used to guide it. So last month, the authorities set alight oil in a trench on the outskirts of Baghdad to determine how long it would burn. On Saturday, they unleashed the fires and smoke in the hope that they would succeed where anti-aircraft artillery had failed.

Now, as the coalition's war with Iraq enters its second week, one of the many garish monuments in Baghdad to Saddam's gargantuan ambitions sums up the urgent question facing the US and UK war planners. At both ends of a mile-long military parade ground on the west of Baghdad are oversized sculptures of Saddam's hands holding crossed scimitars, the bulging stone forearms said to be modelled after the Iraqi leader's. The question posed by the shrine to Saddam, the fearless warrior, is simple: Will Iraqis follow the mythical example of their leader and pick up weapons against US soldiers entering Baghdad, or will they hail the troops as liberators?

Iraq is a fiercely nationalist country with a history of fighting off foreign rulers. And Iraqis are keen students of shifts in power, with many saying they will not show support for any US troops until they know the Saddam regime is finished. Even if the US assessments are correct that a majority of Iraqis would like to get rid of the regime, a troublesome minority could resist. At the moment, nothing points to cheering Iraqis lining Baghdad's broad avenues for a ticker-tape parade. Instead of hailing the troops with flowers and music-as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted in the run-up to the war-Iraqi forces have fought fiercely in southern Iraq, a restive region that top US Defence officials thought would be taken with relative ease.

Now, evidence of preparations to wage pitched street battles instead of organising parades are everywhere in Baghdad. The white Toyota Land Cruisers preferred by security officials ply the streets, even while thundering US air raids are under way. Mixed patrols comprising soldiers, intelligence agents and members of the ruling Baa'th Party militia watch every major intersection and stand guard in sandbag foxholes. In shopping districts, they have taken to the upper stories of buildings in classic urban combat formation.

But it is on the edges of Baghdad that the Iraqi forces are expected to dig in. There are about 85,000 Republican Guards and Special Republican Guards, a better equipped and trained component of the army, on the city's outskirts. They are already being attacked by US jets and missiles every night. Volunteer militia have also been credited by the Iraqis for leading the defence in the south. They include the Baa'th Party's fighters, their numbers possibly reaching hundreds of thousands. There are also the Saddam fidayeen, militia headed by the President's son, Uday Hussein, and the Al Quds Brigades, also in tens of thousands. In a statement to the country on March 25, Saddam called on such volunteers to prepare to fight.

WAR CRY: A mother holds a child with burn injuries outside an Iraqi hospital after the March 21 bombing in the capital city

More worrisome is the fact that the apparatus of Saddam's regime remains largely intact, especially its propaganda machine. Whether this is by design or failure, the Pentagon is not saying. The result, however, is double-edged. Saddam's speeches aired by the state-controlled media may enable the US and UK intelligence agencies to assess his condition more easily and perhaps trace his whereabouts. But it also means that the Iraqis continue to be encouraged by round-the-clock accounts of farmers and peasant women purportedly shooting down airborne chariots of the supposedly invincible US invaders with mere hunting rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. That's a powerful motivator.

Interviews with Iraqis reveal deep scepticism about the US portraying itself as liberator. One reason is former President George H.W. Bush's call for rebellion following the 1991 war and his subsequent failure to support Iraqis in the south and north when they rose to overthrow Saddam. The uprisings were brutally suppressed and US credibility plummeted.

Another reason is the international trade sanctions imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Saddam's misrule may be one reason why the living standards of Iraqis have dropped precipitously in the past decade but the UN, and in particular its most powerful member, are held especially responsible.

HOLY ORDER

In Baghdad, four nuns refuse to abandon their post-an orphanage

CARETAKERS: The four nuns from the Missionaries of Charity Ummer sings like a bird, but cannot prop himself up on his chair. Orphaned in the 1991 war, the physically challenged boy may well have been robbed of his songs too as shrieking bombs drown out his voice, replacing it with fear in his eyes. Fighting the fear has not been easy-for Ummer or the 23 other orphans he stays with-ever since the war began. But having the four nuns helps. "Bombs are falling around us like hailstorm, but we don't want to leave them," says Sister Densy, the determination in her voice hard to miss. She is one of the four nuns from the Missionaries of Charity who run the orphanage. Sister Densy, Sister Roselin and Sister Terisiana from Kerala and Sister Joseph Carol from Dhaka have stayed on despite warnings from the Indian Embassy. The embassy has temporarily shut down, while Saddam Hussein's main palace, a stone's throw from the orphanage, has been heavily bombarded. But the sisters cling to the children huddled in an old convent on the banks of the Tigris. "We cannot leave them as most of them are physically or mentally challenged," explains Sister Densy. Unperturbed by the explosions and wailing sirens, they even refuse to move to a shelter provided by the Iraqi Government. So even as people around the convent flee to take cover, the nuns pray to God. God has listened. So far. Started shortly after the 1991 war on the initiation of Saddam, the orphanage was inaugurated by Mother Teresa. The building, provided free of cost to the order by Saddam, now houses the 24 children orphaned during the war. But despite the food shortage, there is no dearth of people willing to provide food. "I have worked in many countries but Iraqis are a distinct class," affirms Sister Densy. The sisters are, however, worried about the lack of medicines. "We require antibiotics to fight the burns caused by radiation," says one of the sisters. But perhaps more important for the children is the care that they are providing. For the sisters, the battle has only just begun.

John Brittas is the bureau chief of Kairali TV and was recently in Baghdad

Yet another reason many Iraqis doubt Washington's intent is that they view as tainted its bona fides as a promoter of freedom and democracy. For them, the US is synonymous with neither. The example Iraqis most often cite is of what they describe as Washington's indifference or outright hostility to Palestine's frustrated aspirations for nationhood. So doubtful are some Iraqis about the US' commitment to democracy that they would, given a choice, choose Saddam's dictatorship over US occupation.

Despite these troubling perceptions-some of which are doubtless shaped and distorted by the Government-controlled media-no one can say with certainty how US soldiers will be greeted in Baghdad. In all likelihood, the answer goes back to the ubiquitous presence of the Iraqi leader. After nearly a quarter century of dictatorship, Saddam is the government and the government is Saddam. The fear of the 65-year-old Iraqi leader and his sprawling network of supporters and spies is the main motivator for most Iraqis. In the end, Baghdad's greeting for the US troops will be a test of Saddam's success in equating his fate with that of Iraq as an independent, sovereign nation. If Iraqis believe that equation, they will fight. If they don't, they may back away.

A week into "Operation Iraqi Freedom", the Bush Administration officials still predict victory parades. "You'll see an explosion of joy and relief" among Iraqis, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz told BBC. But until Iraqis see the ground under Saddam teetering, they could well decide to play it safe and follow the regime's exhortations to defend Baghdad's streets with their blood.

That appeared ever more the case last week, following the US bombing of a commercial strip in the working class district of Shebab. It wasn't immediately clear what the US was targeting. A civil defence facility a half kilometre away that had been bombed in 1991, was untouched. Whatever the case, scores of angry Iraqis, some with AK-47 rifles, gathered in the wake of the bombing to protest the killings of what Iraqi authorities said were at least 20 civilians and the wounding of at least 30 more.

Under skies glowing red from ferocious sandstorms that have swept Baghdad the past two days, they danced giddily on the carbonised carcasses of cars and chanted over and over again, "We are ready to sacrifice our blood for President Saddam Hussein." As the crowd thinned and after several busloads of reporters drove away, a teenager walked by carrying the severed hand of one of the victims, cold purple flesh dangling from the wrist and the shredded thumb. He was soon joined by a throng of residents and party activists and the chants resumed, "Saddam Hussein! Saddam Hussein!" As the din grew louder, the boy placed the hand on the roof of a sedan so it could be photographed by the few remaining journalists and be feted by neighbourhood residents like the honoured guest of a party.

As the skies turned yellow and the streets grew slick from rain that had begun to fall, a black-bereted soldier picked up the hand and, to the dizzying delight of the crowd, paraded it in circles and laid it on a piece of shredded metal in a bomb crater so it could be photographed again. "Listen Bush and Blair, we love Saddam Hussein!" the crowd shouted as the soldier stood proudly over his trophy of mutilated flesh.

To the south of Baghdad, the rumbling of bombs and the thundering storm grew closer.