ReachM High Cowboy has good war links up, including two blogs emanating from Iraq. One is Salem Pax, and the other is by Kevin Sites, a BBC journalist covering the war from the front lines. The blog is his personal diary and has lot's of photos--which Kevin calls "photo-blogging." We like it a lot.

If you find some other good links or blogs that are not biased in favor of Bush and Rumsfeld, please list them in the comments section. Also, war protest links, since we won't be able to provide our own in-depth coverage.

Everybody needs a voice--we like to publish the ones we agree with here. You all know where to go for the other side.

Bush: It's official. The war has begun, on his orders. It could be a longer war than some predict. It may require our sustained presence in Iraq when it's done. We are going to apply decisive force. "We are going to carry on our work of peace." Really, he said that.

The "target of opportunity" strike was a decapitation strike aimed at Saddam, targeting a location where we believed Saddam and other leaders were located. No one knows if it was successful.

CNN still says the strikes don't mean that war has begun. This is a prelude.

Update: Everyone's "retired for the night"--Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice. So no more action before tomorrow.

CNN reports a cruise missile has launched against "a target of opportunity" in Iraq. Broadly, that means something just became available that wasn't available yesterday, according to Jamie McIntyre. The President will address the nation at 10:15 E.S.T. It's 6 a.m. in Bagdad.

Update: The target was a "leadership target"--not one that just became available but one they just decided to hit. CNN

Update: The President decided to launch an isolated strike because otherwise it would be an "opportunity lost."

Update: There was more than one target, one South of Baghdad, one elsewhere (CNN)

Here in Washington, Congress seemed extremely normal today. We got to the Longworth building at 8:30 am. There were metal detectors at the building's entrances, but no lines, no dogs, no national guard, just local cops and guards, and not too many of them. Maybe 2 or 3 per entrance. It took under 30 seconds to go through security. No hand searches of briefcases, no removing shoes, belts or being hand-scanned by the "wand." The detectors don't seem to be set as high as they are in federal courthouses or jails. We walked in and out several times over the morning and neither us nor anyone else set off a detector.

What a contrast to our visit during the Clinton Impeachment trial. Now that was some high security. You couldn't go up or down an elevator without a special pass. Think about that, the elevators were guarded. At one point, the trial was stopped with no reason given and the cops/guards abruptly evacuated the chamber--we thought it was for a closed-door discussion, but when we got out in the hall, the buzz was that a "package" had been found. Most likely untrue, but you couldn't even leave to go the bathroom and come back without losing your seat and going to the back of the line and starting again. And this was the special line--not the public line-- as we had passes from the White House Counsel's office. Today was entirely different, You would never know there was anything critical taking place in the world.

This morning, once inside, we spent 45 minutes in a meeting with other defense lawyers who. like us, had flown in to lobby on the Innocence Protection Act. Our "group" included Larry Goldman, the President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Past NACDL President Jerry Lefcourt (you may remember him as Abbie Hoffman's lawyer in the Chicago 8 trial), us (we're Secretary of the Organization), Kyle O'Dowd, NACDL's Legislative Director, two members of the Board of Directors and one past member of the Board. Also at the meeting was Peter Loge, Executive Director of the Justice Project.

The atmosphere in the large Longworth cafeteria was very relaxed and lively--no hint of tension in the air. No tvs that we were aware of and the only people glued to their cell phones were some of the lawyers at our table. (Not us.)

We didn't see any extra cops or security inside the buildings. In fact, at one point we needed to ask directions to get from Longworth to someplace in Cannon and we asked a guy walking by in the hall. He spent over 2 minutes telling us how to get there, like it was a very important question and he had plenty of time. He turned out to be a Congressman.