America/Conor O'Clery: On Wednesday as the war in Iraq wound down, the military brass decided to stage a victory concert in the Pentagon courtyard, broadcast to American forces worldwide.
It was inevitable that the top performer would be country music star, Darryl Worley. Introducing the Tennessee singer, Gen Richard Myers called the tall singer with Colin Farrell looks and designer stubble a "great American patriot". US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "I mentioned that I was going to come over here and be with Darryl Worley . . . and the president said, 'Well, I know who that is. I'm a country music fan'."
The Bush administration have every reason to love Worley, the prime example of how since 9/11, rock and pop music in the United States has turned away from its traditional role of questioning authority. After a visit to the troops in Afghanistan the singer co-wrote Have You Forgotten?, a country song that implies a direct connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - never proven - to justify war against Iraq.
It contains the following lyrics: "I hear people saying we don't need this war/I say there's some things worth fighting for/What about our freedom and this piece of ground?/We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down . . . Have you forgotten how it felt that day/To see your homeland under fire/And her people blown away?/Have you forgotten when those towers fell? . . . Some say this country's just out looking for a fight/After 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right."
Have you Forgotten? became the fastest-rising country single since Garth Brooks' Longneck Bottle in 1997, helped by the popularity of the war with an audience traditionally sympathetic with conservative views and by the fact that it was played over and over again by many of the 1,200 radio stations owned by Clear Channel, the pro-Republican Texas radio giant that has used the airwaves to sponsor pro-war rallies. Recording artists who might have felt like challenging the pro-war mood were faced with restrictions by recording companies and media outlets.
Before the war the hottest country music group was the Dixie Chicks trio from Dallas, Texas. After their singer Natalie Maines told concert-goers she was ashamed to come from the same state as George Bush, many radio outlets removed the Dixie Chicks hit Travelin' Soldier from their playlist.
The group was thrashed on conservative talk shows and web sites and lectured by fellow country singers like Travis Tritt who said: "To be a good American regardless of which side you're on you have to get behind President Bush."As Have you Forgotten? took the number one spot on Billboard's country song chart, the Dixie Chicks' song Travelin' Soldier, about a soldier killed in Vietnam, went from number one to oblivion.
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The Iraq war officially ended at 2.01 p.m. on Tuesday, Eastern Standard Time - at least as far as the three US cable network news channels were concerned. At that moment they suddenly abandoned a live press conference on the war being given by Donald Rumsfeld to switch to a news briefing by sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee in Modesto, California.
Mr Lee had little to say other than that he did not know whether the body of a woman washed ashore on San Francisco Bay was that of Laci Peterson, a pregnant Modesto woman who disappeared on Christmas Eve in a case that had consumed the news channels before the war.
The networks stayed with Mr Lee. It was the first breach in the 24-hour war coverage and a return to the "normal" post-OJ Simpson news diet of suspects, cops and lawyers.
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At the moment the networks cut away on Tuesday, Mr Rumsfeld was being asked by reporters about the failure of US troops to prevent the looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities and the destruction of the state library. "Looting is an unfortunate thing," he was saying philosophically.
"No one likes it. No one allows it. It happens." But critics point out that US forces did allow it, while protecting the Iraqi oil ministry.
The loss has stunned American scholars who pleaded with the Pentagon before the war to protect Iraq's national archives. Archeology Professor Paul Zimansky of Boston University compared it to the burning of the library at Alexandria that destroyed vast tracts of the ancient world.Martin E. Sullivan, executive director of Historic St Mary's City Commission in Maryland, resigned as chairman of President Bush's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property in anger over what he called the "the wanton and preventable destruction" of the museum.
US forces displayed extraordinary precision and restraint in securing the oil ministry and oil fields but were "nothing short of impotent in failing to attend to the protection of \ cultural heritage," he told Mr Bush in his resignation letter.
Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, also resigned from the committee, saying Baghdad had been sacked before, but "it hasn't been this bad for 700 years."
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The mood of celebration at the Pentagon has been soured for Muslim employees by the choice of the Rev Franklin Graham, who has called Islam an evil religion, to lead Good Friday prayers at the Pentagon yesterday.
Zadil Ansari, lay leader of the Muslim community at the Pentagon said the Rev Graham's statements about Islam "have been very controversial and divisive".
The Rev Graham is zealous about converting Muslims to Christianity and during the 1991 Gulf War sent 30,000 Arabic-language bibles for US troops to distribute in Muslim countries.
The Muslim employees sent a letter to the Pentagon chaplain's office urging it to find "a more inclusive and honorable Christian clergyman" to lead the service, but the chaplain's office refused, saying some Christian employees had requested Graham as a guest preacher, and that Muslim and Jewish prayer services had also been held in the Pentagon.