Politics in Baghdad: 'They are the villains. We are fighting against mercenaries and criminals'

Yesterday was the day of the paperclips. Back in 1945, they say that as the first Soviet tanks roared down the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin, German civil servants in a neighbouring building were working out the Third Reich paperclip ration for 1946. No one had looked out of the window.

And in Baghdad yesterday, the paperclips actually lay in their countless hundreds on office desks, with pins and old binders and computer instructions, pro-forma papers and card index racks.

The files are long gone, as well as the computers, the glass desktops, the books and the government art that always adorns Baath party offices. Just across the road, almost in view of the villa's windows, an annex of the Iraqi planning ministry was still smouldering after its destruction by cruise missiles a few hours earlier.

But President Saddam Hussein's ministers know how to deal with the day of the paperclips. Iraq will fight on. The invading armies are mercenaries. Not a single Iraqi soldier has surrendered. The Americans tried to murder President Saddam's family, and they failed. The Anglo-American mercenary army will meet defeat. Indeed, President Saddam has himself offered a range of rewards for individual acts of courage by his troops, of which more later. So now let's go back to the day of the paperclips.

The scene: a villa annexe of the ministry of information on the banks of the Tigris river, presided over by a framed portrait of Saddam Hussein. The time: just after 1.00pm, as the world's satellite television stations were announcing the imminent capture of Umm Qasr port by US Marines, the accidental crash of a US helicopter with 12 lives lost, and showing pictures of men in Iraqi uniforms surrendering to British troops.

The characters: Mohamed Said al-Sahaf, the bespectacled Iraqi Minister of Information, and Mahmoud Diab al-Ahmed, the Iraqi Minister of the Interior who is holding a silver-painted Kalashnikov rifle in his right hand. Attendant lords: more than 100 Iraqi and foreign journalists.

Journalist: "Is it true the Americans are about to capture Umm Qasr?"

Mohamed al-Sahaf: "They admitted that they didn't go to Umm Qasr and that they had failed to capture it. They say they have gone 100 miles into the desert and they are lying to you. They have showed a tape and it shows only a desert."

Journalist: "But they are in Iraq."

Mr Sahaf: "Are they? We don't know. Are they?"

Journalist: "Are you worried?"

Mr Sahaf: "Not at all. Not at all. I think they are frightened. We have destroyed two of their aircraft. We don't judge things by the first day, the second day. We know them very well since their wide-scale aggression (sic) of 1991. We know their tricks, their tactics. We know that our morale and the morale of our armed forces are not dependent on this or that.

"Our morale is in our resilience, in our good understanding of the situation, in our deep belief that we are the just side and they are the villains. We are fighting against mercenaries and criminals."

Journalist: "What about the Iraqis taken prisoner?"

Mr Sahaf: "There is nothing in this, not at all. They are not Iraqi soldiers, they are not members of the Iraqi armed forces. They are just some people in the hands of the British."

And so it went on. The most important part of Mr Sahaf's peroration was an expression of his moral horror that the Americans should have tried to assassinate President Saddam on Thursday morning. He provided photographs of wounded Iraqi civilians – they were pinned to a drawing board behind him – who were also the victims of "these villains in Washington and London". And all the while, Mr Ahmed watched in silence, his silver Kalashnikov dangling from his right hand or resting on his right shoulder, his ammunition belt threaded around a khaki flak-jacket.

The script continued, fit for any performance of Macbeth. "They also targeted the family of Saddam Hussein," Mr Sahaf said. "They targeted them, but God has protected them. His own family! But they are safe. This is a game. This is the Devil. This is a complete disgrace. They are a superpower of villains, they are a superpower of Al Capone.

"He [President George Bush] is the official tyrant of America. The Devil is in the White House. We will continue to capture these villains, these mercenaries. He will face this tragedy."

Mr Ahmed spoke more quietly. A former minister of irrigation – and one whom they say was often hard at work far from his office – he dealt even more briskly with the preposterous idea that Umm Qasr might fall. "This is silly talk. Umm Qasr is an Iraqi port and is going to remain an Iraqi port. It will be hard for them to take it."

From time to time, Mr Ahmed lifted his silver rifle to rest it meaningfully across his shoulder as the camera auto-drives purred. "We don't want to kill the people of America and Britain; we don't have a problem with them, but they got a first taste of what to expect when 12 of them were incinerated."

And now for President Saddam's latest reward. Unfortunately, it is being offered in the ever-declining Iraqi dinar. But it goes like this: for the downing of an American or British aircraft 100 million Iraqi dinars (£30,810); For the capture of an American or British soldier £15,405; and for the killing of an American or British soldier £7,703. Which shows how much the Iraqis would value a prisoner, with all its propaganda uses, rather than a dead enemy soldier.

There were other, less impressive exhortations to Iraqi victory yesterday. There was, for example, the Friday sermon of Sheikh Abdul-Latif Humayen, who called upon "Arabs and Muslims" to strike at America because "wherever you are, your Iraq, the country of strugglers and believers, is coming under the most unprecedented aggression in history by one of the most arrogant states of history". It was the same old "kill the infidel" stuff we have heard so often before.

And the truth? Across the road, the great hulk of the planning ministry – did Tariq Aziz have an office there, we all asked ourselves? – continued to emit white smoke from its carcass. There were, of course, no tanks outside. Not today anyway. Not when eternal victory lies within reach of Iraq. But I did find a truck idling there, piled high with mirrors, bookshelves, fridges, televisions and even a work of modern Iraqi art, all green pixillated paint against a rendering of the Tigris river. The paperclips remained inside the building.