April Fools' Day? Tomorrow? No way! That's it, we're out for the weekend to plan some cyber-pranks to do on AOL. But we won't leave you hanging without fin-de-semaine reading material. Thanks to the Observer, we've read the 131-page proposal for Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings's upcoming I Lost My Love in Baghdad, which we're told agent Andrew Wiley has sold to Random House Scribner for a cool north of a cool half-million. Far as we can tell, ILMLIB — which begins with epigraphs from Iraq General George Casey, Prussian icon Carl von Clausewitz, and "Angel of the Morning, 1960's pop song" (!!) — is some sort of experimental memoir about Green Zone romance leading up to the literal (that is, literal literal) January death of Hastings's gf Andi Parhamovich. And, yes, it is called I LOST MY LOVE IN BAGHDAD. Needless to say, this portends the end of Western civilization as such; highlights from the 75,000-word manuscript after the jump.

Baudrillard, R.I.P., yada, yada. This Gulf War may or may not be taking place, but the kids there still need some entertainment. Unfortunately, high-profile acts aren't as keen to maybe get their faux-hawks beheaded as were the USO stars of the the Bob Hope era. What's a Fallujah venue-booker for the Defense Department's "Armed Forces Entertainment" (AFE) to do? According to the Journal Weekend Edition's John Jugensen, take advantage of the scruffy ambitions of all those unknown bands on the AOL and Pod players:

Big trouble at the New York Times Magazine this morning, as an editors' note reveals that one of the women who appeared in last week's cover story on female Iraq veterans never served in Iraq and might have made up much of what she told reporter Sara Corbett in her interview.

Attention, war-haters: tomorrow from 11:00 to 3:00, Columbia students will be holding a cell phone telethon for peace on College Walk. "Together, Columbia students will show that the student voice is not only passionate, but ready to fight for real, not symbolic, action to end this war." Real, not symbolic, action! Sort of like a cell phone telethon, only, you know, actually the opposite of that. Okay, but for real (not symbolic) we're happy that Columbia students are making the ultimate class-skipping sacrifice in order to support our troops, and we're sure that every penny of the $6,550 they aim to raise for UNICEF—one cent for every death caused by the war in Iraq as of March 20!—will make a big difference. We just hope that no one shows them this week's Shouts and Murmurs column, which kind of rains all over their class-skipping activist parade.

So, you seriously mean to say that we would not be living in a better or safer world if the coalition forces had turned around and sailed or flown home in the spring of 2003?

So that poll that the Post touts on its cover today? Pretty interesting, given what seemed to be the national mood during the recent elections. Still, you can't argue with an impartial survey of the American people, right? We want to thank Public Opinion Strategies, the firm that conducted the poll, for clearing things up. Also, we'd like to learn a little more about them. Like, what's on their home page right now?

• Say hello to the new Wall Street Journal. For free! [WSJ]
  

• Ron Burkle and Eli Broad getting more details about Tribune, LAT. [LAT
  

• Supreme Court allows federal prosecutors to look at Judy Miller's phone records. Why do we even bother with a First Amendment? [NYT]
  

As of yesterday, NBC has decided to start referring to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war." The decision was reached after much internal/external consultation, and its announcement has been attended with much ceremonial chin-wagging. Other news organizations were quick to note that they, too, have used the phrase, though usually in the predictive sense, or with the escape-clause question mark — i.e., "Iraq: Civil War?". Nevertheless, this Cronkitean declaration by an American news organization will no doubt give the Shiites and Sunnis of Iraq pause for reflection as they kill each other. "Civil war? When did it come to this? Oh right, a couple years ago actually. Carry on."

This ABC News segment on outrageously dishonest Army recruiters in the tri-state area is funny enough to make Michael Moore crawl into his grave, just so he can spin there. College kids equipped with hidden cameras were sent into various Army recruiting offices to get the lowdown on signing up; in addition to claiming that the Iraq was is over, a couple recruiters were so jocular and dismissive of death in general that it's hard to believe they weren't in on the joke. Watch for the guy who compares his love for Subway sandwiches to your relative chance of being killed on the subway, and thus, your small chance of being killed in Iraq. Get it?

The New York Times wakes up to yet another scary aspect of YouTube, that being the posting of graphic combat footage from Iraq. The obvious points are addressed — YouTube enforcing a policy of taking down videos that show death and/or graphic violence, veterans and others expressing mixed feelings about inappropriate content vs. free speech, and angst over pro-insurgency video that glorifies the killing of American soldiers. Though videos like these get administratively removed pretty quickly, you can always find more (often the same videos, re-uploaded endlessly) with elementary searches. YouTube carefully notes that they delete clips that "display graphic depictions of violence in addition to any war footage (U.S. or other) displayed with intent to shock or disgust, or graphic war footage with implied death (of U.S. troops or otherwise)." That "other/otherwise" qualifier might be more often applied to dead Americans than dead insurgents, though; while various Al Qaeda propaganda videos of sniper hits on American soldiers get routinely deleted, other clips — like this infrared footage of a supposedly insurgent trio getting cut to pieces by machine-gun fire from a C-130 plane — can remain online for months undisturbed. That video itself isn't graphically violent per se, but its indistinct nature almost makes it just as unsettling as up-close blood & guts. Maybe it's been overlooked by YouTube censors because the uploader categorized it as "comedy."

BAGHDAD, Oct. 5 — Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation.

Via Eat the Press, the following analysis of George W. Bush from noted psephologist Diddy:

Number two on the list? Prosthetic limbs.

There's precious little good news out of Iraq these days. (For example, take our defense secretary. Please. Yuk yuk.) But the photo on the top of the Times homepage right now provides at least a small glimmer of hope. As the theoretically sovereign nation slides further into disarray, it's nice to know that if civil war rages on and supplies become scarce, President Jalal Talabani will provide enough meat to feed entire neighborhoods.

So we were leafing through this week's new Time magazine, and we ended up getting drawn into its arts lede, "Let's Roll...," about the forthcoming film United 93, about the plane hijacked by terrorists on September 11 and crashed by the hostages into a Pennsylvania field so that it could not be used as yet another improvised missile. It's a good and compelling piece, about what sounds like a good and compelling movie, and it's got some interesting insight into how the film was made — all the victim's families approved, scenes were improvised, and it was cast in an unusual way:

And it's really a shame, because its future was looking so bright before that mosque bombing.

• Now, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson will take turns joining Elizabeth Vargas on World News Tonight. We really hope they can work George Stephanopoulos into that rotation, too. [NYT]
• CBS Newser John Roberts decamps for CNN. If your bosses told you they had no idea who'll be the next anchor but they're sure it won't be you, you'd leave too. [Public Eye]
• High-ranking laddie Andy Clerkson grows up and moves out. The Dennis Publishing editorial director will leave his job, summer in Montauk, have a kid, and move back to England. [WWD]
• One of the many companies that isn't buying the Observer: Reed Elsevier. [NYP (last item)]
• NYO on NYT: Ric Burns to produce docu on the Gray Lady, and war gets in the way of Jill Abramson and Maureen Dowd's planned trip to Iraq. [NYO (second and third items)]

• ABC anchor, cameraman show improvement after surgery. [ABCNews.com]
• Ted Koppel is a sucky op-edster, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Even Dave Barry thinks newspapers are dead. [SFChron]
• Daily News TV editors doesn't get Jon Stewart's jokes, care much for the guy, or, it seems, care much for Stewart's fans. What was that, Dave, about newspapers being irrelevant? [NYDN]
• Syd Schanberg has misty water-colored memories of covering Donald Trump. [VV]
• Unsurprisingly, Pinch thinks everything at the Trib is just fabulous. When you're a scion, there is no rain on your parade. [AJR]
• Live like Anna: Vogue Living is on its way. [WWD]