Lara Marlowe watched the Jay and Tim show - a Coalition Provisional Authority press conference on plans for a new Iraqi government.
The US-British coalition "fought probably the most merciful war in the history of warfare", Gen Jay Garner claimed in his first press conference in Baghdad yesterday.
Not only were US weapons "merciful", the retired US general in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority would have us believe, "at the end of the war, the infrastructure is still in good shape."
Had the Pentagon's 64-year-old "safe pair of hands" really toured Baghdad? Does he not see the hundreds, probably thousands, of bombed-out buildings? But only one kind of infrastructure mattered to Gen Garner: "The oil fields were not destroyed," he said. "We preserved their wealth."
There was a British officer on hand to correct Gen Garner's worst faux pas. "Major General Tim Cross is my deputy for international affairs and all that other hard stuff," Gen Garner said at the outset.
It was "Jay" and "Tim" from there on.
We should address his boss as "Mister" Garner - not "General". Anything to stop allusions to "Iraq's US military governor".
"For the governmental process, I think you'll start to see it by the end of next week," Gen Garner promised. "It'll have Iraqi faces on it. It'll be government by the Iraqis."
He has assigned a US, British or other "international" co-ordinator to every ministry as an adviser. "The co-ordinator isn't going to run it; it's the Iraqis that are going to run it," Gen Garner stressed.
Most government buildings were ransacked after US troops arrived in Baghdad, but that didn't discourage him. "If they can get the people together, we'll find the facilities. If they still have a ministry and there's no furniture, we'll go buy the furniture. We'll get the computers and, as soon as they identify them to us, we'll start paying the salaries. There's a big plan."
It has not escaped the attention of Iraqis that the money to buy the furniture and computers is their money. "I got a good news story on oil," Gen Garner said.
A US general from the army engineering corps announced: "We are pumping 175,000 barrels per day and pumping that through the refinery in Basra . . . we also anticipate in the next day or two pumping about 60,000 barrels per day in the north." The "we" was noted.
The US President and British Prime Minister "were very emphatic" about oil money, Gen Garner continued. "All the revenues will come back to Iraq. It will be for the Iraqi people, for reconstruction and democratic government."
Political questions were more tricky. When I asked whether the US was unwittingly helping to create an Iranian-style Islamic Republic of Iraq, Gen Garner got angry.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life," he said. Perhaps he hasn't noticed the Shia sheikhs taking over the slums of north Baghdad, the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades running the city of Baquba, the hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims - perhaps a million - who walked to the holy city of Karbala this week.
But Gen Cross knows cocky generals are sometimes proved wrong by history. He was less certain about the odds on Iraq becoming an Islamic republic. "Probably not," he said softly.
Gen Garner acknowledged there were anti-US street demonstrations. "It's probably a little more magnitude than I expected, but that doesn't surprise me at all," he said.
"The ability to demonstrate and disagree is the first step in the democratic process . . . What you find here is a lot of Iranian influence. I certainly don't think that they represent anywhere near a majority. The majority is silent, keeping safe, still somewhat afraid, and I think as you see them get more confident, you'll see more favouritism towards the US."
The Iranians had better watch out. "What concerns me, the role that I hear the Iranians are playing . . . I don't think the coalition is going to accept any outside-of-country influence. We are going to be very strong on that," Gen Garner threatened.
But opposition to the US presence was coming from inside Iraq, from Shia clerics with a huge following, a journalist protested. Gen Garner missed the point. "I said external influence," he said. "I think you saw our administration make a very strong statement on Syria. That's what I'm talking about. We're not going to allow external influence to come in here and play in this process."
Gen Cross came to the rescue, ducking the question of Iraq's home-grown religious leaders. "The spiritual dimension of the future of Iraq is as important as the spiritual dimension of the United States or the United Kingdom," he said.
Gen Garner's pro-Kurdish statements had created "tension" in Ankara, a Turkish journalist said. Gen Garner thought he might have been misquoted. Then he gurgled about the Kurds's "magnificent job of bringing in a viable economy, of having a democratic process up there, a great leadership".
Since it achieved autonomy thanks to US intervention in 1991, Kurdistan has fared better than the rest of Iraq, but it remains a tribal society run by mafia-like clans. "What they've done there can stand as a model for the rest of Iraq," Gen Garner enthused.
"The rest of Iraq has been in a dark room with no light for 35 years and two weeks ago, we opened the door and pushed them out in the sunlight and they cannot see yet."
On Kurdistan too, the British modern major general tried to extricate his American boss from a tight spot. "He did not say it was the model," Gen Cross warned us. "He said it was a model. People pick up on words and misrepresent things."
In a week or so, Gen Garner kept saying, new Iraqi leaders would "emerge". He twice referred to Mohamed Mohsen al-Zubaidi, the man who proclaimed himself mayor of Baghdad with the tacit approval of the US military, as Mr Zubari.
"If the people of Baghdad are unhappy with him, all they have to do is come and tell us and we'll ask him to leave and we'll show him the door," Gen Garner said.
Baghdad continues to be a dangerous city, plagued by looters, armed robbers and nightly gun battles. Gen Garner promised to hold a meeting to discuss security in the capital "within 48 hours".
What if Iraqis don't accept the leaders whom Gen Garner expects to "emerge" by the end of next week? a journalist asked. In the circumstances, a week seems a long time, another commented. "If they're crying out for leadership, then they'll probably accept the leaders that emerge," Gen Garner concluded.