THIS MORNING CNN reports that many Iraqi officials didn’t show up for work in Baghdad and that the police are not on the streets. Also, the network is broadcasting footage of a massive anti-Saddam rally in the Saddam City section of eastern Baghdad. There are pictures of one man spitting on a picture of Saddam; another man beats an image of the dictator with his shoe; another man chants “The tyrant . . . is finished;” yet another proclaims “No Saddam! No Saddam!” Something’s going on here.

The London Times reports that “hundreds of looting civilians cheered and danced in the streets of Baghdad” and that “Foreign journalists said that the Iraqi minders that monitor their movements failed to turn up for work today at the Palestine Hotel. State television went off the air yesterday.”