Rageh Omaar live from Baghdad

Rageh Omaar was being interviewed from Baghdad by Jeremy Bowen on this morning's BBC Breakfast show in one of those ghastly reporter to reporter interviews.

The topic of the interview was what ordinary Iraqi people think about the war. Quite unbelievably (or should that be "entirely predictably") the BBC's finest managed to warble on for a good five minutes or so without once mentioning the fact that Iraq is a tyranny.

Now forgive me for sounding just a little bit thick, but isn't it just possible that the prospect of being dragged away by the secret police and being subjected to torture followed by death or years in a labour camp, might have had an ever so slight bearing on what people said?

There was something else that the boys from the Beeb missed. Namely, does it matter what ordinary Iraqis think? And that brings us back to what it is like living in a tyranny. Your opinions don't count. Mind you, I if you had gone to the effort of sending a reporter and camera crew to Baghdad, you might be loath to own up that it had been a complete waste of time.

One remark caught my attention. According to Omaar, most Iraqis know perfectly well what is going on in the outside world because they have satellite TV. Now, I am way out of my depth on this one but is it really that difficult to control satellite TV? After all, dishes are pretty obvious. And if lots of people do have dishes are there, perhaps, other ways to control what people see? I just find it very difficult to believe that a regime like Saddam's would make so much effort to control other forms of media only allow a coach and horses through this one.