This was hardly fictional, although the studios were very much involved in it and it was very unreal. For one, the attack was possibly the worst kept secret in the History of Wars. Hours before the bombing began, the word was out that the US was revving up its war machine. It gave television reporters and anchors plenty of time to line up behind the action.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour even managed to scramble from London to Baghdad. Shortly before the bombs began raining down on Baghdad, US television and cable networks had their cameras trained on the streets to capture the mayhem.

``Everything'sready. They are going to begin bombing any moment now,'' one excited hack phoned another from the lounge of Washington's National Press Centre, where many media types gathered before a bank of television screens showing various channels to witness the action -- in much the same spirit as some of them had watched the World Cup soccer games.

Seven years after the first televised Gulf War, there was a marginal improvement in technology. Cameras now had nightvision. But the cameras were few and the bombs many and distant. Technology did not help mitigate or illuminate the death and destruction which occurred many miles from the cameras, in the towns and suburbs which were apparently wasted by more than 100 cruise missiles.

It was a surreal end to a day that began with the talk of impeachment and ended with war. The bureau chief of one national daily struggle to figure out whether it was ``two crises, one and half crises or one jumbo all-inclusive crisis.''

There were plenty of sub-plots and sub-texts too.Cameras swung between Baghdad and the Capitol. Between the United Nations and the American heartland.

Throughout the day, there was a recurring reference to Hollywood, the fount of fiction and fantasy. Meanwhile, Hollywood itself was staging a different kind of war.

In Los Angeles, dozens of Hollywood celebrities rallied for Clinton and against impeachment carrying banners which read ``Sex Is No Crime'' and ``Honk For Sanity.''

A solid Clinton constituency, many Hollywood types condemned the Republicans for carrying on a witchhunt. ``With a true abuse of power, the current congressional leadership is determined to force the removal of a twice-elected president from office,'' actress Barbra Streisand, a Clintons' confidante, was quoted as saying.

Others like Robert de Niro and Alec Baldwin have been making the rounds of TV studios and calling up lawmakers, drumming up opposition to the impeachment move. ``The whole thing is like we're living in nightmare. It's like a moment of national insanity. We'regoing to look back on it in 20 or 30 years and say the country was held hostage by a very small group of rabid, right-wing Republicans,'' Director Rob Reiner said in one interview.

But the Hollywood move, and several other rallies including one by writers and litterateurs in New York, were drowned in the din of bombing that followed later in the day as the drums of war shepherded out the debate over impeachment. By night time, war-war on Iraq had, in a sense, prevailed over the jaw-jaw over impeachment -- even if only for the weekend.