The war in Iraq has been a predictably grim business, full of death,
destruction and now rampant looting. But it hasn't been miserable for
everyone. Sally Weale finds some unlikely winners in the conflict
Sally Weale

Pundits

There may have been far too many of them, filling too many hours of
rolling 24-hour news with too little insight, but the BBC's Mark Urban,
Newsnight's diplomatic editor, has been one of the few people to have
consistently shed light on events unfolding in Iraq. With his peaked
eyebrows, satanic good looks and suave presentation, Urban may have been a
little too gleeful for some tastes. But his daily wrap on BBC2's
Newsnight has become essential viewing during the war, particularly among the
military top brass.

Francis Tusa has also won a sizeable cult following with his dispatches
on Sky News, which is generally thought to have had a good war. He
certainly knows his Challengers from his Abramses, but there's one
reservation: top bods at Sky News were a tad concerned about Wing Commander
Tusa's overenthusiasm with the felt-tip. "On Saturday Francis drew 18 blue
and black arrows around Baghdad. We had to take the cameras off him,"
one colleague said queasily.

Combatants

Applications to Sandhurst will soar after Britain's telegenic young
officers, with their posh accents and unruffled manner, excelled
themselves on the telly as well as in the desert. Among those to single out:
Colonel Chris Vernon, Group Captain Al Lockwood and Group Captain Jon
Fynes. We'll miss 'em all.

But the star of the show was Lt-Col Tim Collins, who had us swooning
with his words, rather than his Hollywood-hero good looks. (If there's a
film, George Clooney should play him.) Collins, commander of the 1st
Battalion of the Royal Irish, was the man who gave that eve-of-battle
speech, which gave dignity to a war that many believe unjust and illegal.
Remember this? "We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our
flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the
only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own."

Another hero, of course, is Private Jessica Lynch, 19, who is
recovering in a German military hospital, besieged by an army of 100 newsmen and
women desperate to hear her story of capture by the Iraqis and
liberation by the Americans.

Military hardware

The performance of the Challenger 2 tank was in some doubt after
problems during pre- combat exercises, but it has emerged a winner. Having
obliterated Iraqi armour and survived direct hits from anti-tank
missiles, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades that have destroyed
several US M1 Abrams tanks, they seem well worth their price tag of £5.6m
each.

Then there's the helmet that saved Eric Walderman's life. The royal
marine was hit four times by an Iraqi sniper, but lived to tell the tale
thanks to his Kevlar composite helmet. The bullets simply bounced off.

In the US, while car sales in general have been down, one has done well
from the conflict. The Hummer, the giant GM-made 4x4 used by the
military and often seen in news reports, has been flying off the assembly
line. The plant that makes the H2, or "baby Hummer", is operating at its
full capacity of 40,000 vehicles a year to meet the demand.

Anti-war winners

John Trowbridge's little badge-making firm, Better Badges, has been in
existence for 20 years, and business has never been better. He and his
two colleagues have seen sales multiply by a factor of 10 thanks to the
war. He has supplied 200,000 badges to the Stop the War Coalition, with
slogans ranging from Don't Attack Iraq to Not in My Name and Stop the
War. A further 10,000 have gone to CND (remember them?), which has been
inundated with applications for membership. "Mr Blair has managed to
politicise the whole country," says Trowbridge, a lifelong leftie. "And
he's done me the world of good."

Among the myriad anti-war groups that have sprung up, particularly
among young people, Hands Up for Peace deserves special mention. Devised,
funded and implemented entirely by young people, it started with a
single question in a school common room: "If two middle-aged men can start a
world war, how many young people would it take to stop it?"

The brainchild of three schoolgirls from a north London comprehensive,
the campaign gathered thousands of handprints from children everywhere,
with their name and age on one side and their message for peace on the
other. "We are still getting loads of emails of support from all over
the world," says Kierra Box, 17, one of the founders.

Media

The BBC's Baghdad-based Rageh Omaar has been the media face of the war,
even if his presentation is not to everyone's taste. His reports,
breathy and emotional, have won him an enormous following, particularly
among US housewives, where he has been dubbed the "Scud Stud" of the war,
ahead of such home-grown talent as ABC's Richard Engel, who not only
bears a passing resemblance to Prince Harry, but taught himself to speak
Arabic.

Omaar's BBC colleague Andrew Gilligan deserves a mention for his cool
and authoritative radio reports from the Iraqi capital, as does ITN's
Mark Austin, for his calm professionalism and sure touch. Sky's David
Chater showed all his experience when he went live on air seconds after a
US tank shell slammed into the Palestine hotel in Baghdad.

Among the more unexpected media winners of the war is the Daily Mail's
Ross Benson, once diary editor of the Express, who has transformed
himself from a royal and society reporter into a fully fledged war
correspondent.

As well as the obvious success of al-Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV and Radio
Monte Carlo have scored well. Much of the footage attributed to
al-Jazeera has in fact been provided by Abu Dhabi TV, and Radio Monte Carlo has
been a lifeline for stranded Iraqis.

Last but not least, there's Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi minister
for information, who hilariously promulgated the Ba'ath party line to
the bitter end, despite vivid evidence to the contrary over his left
shoulder.

Publishing

In the Iraq mini-publishing boom, perhaps the most extraordinary
success stories have been Milan Rai's War Plan Iraq, with its introduction by
Noam Chomsky, and War on Iraq, the interview with former UN weapons
inspector Scott Ritter by William Rivers Pitt. After the inevitable Bravo
Two Zero by Andy McNab, these two small books are the two bestsellers
on Amazon's Iraq list in the UK, with Dilip Hero's Iraq: A Report from
the Inside, and Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge by Said Aburish
not far behind.

Entrepreneurs

French entrepreneur Tawfiq Mathlouthi launched his own Mecca Cola to
make the most of a worldwide boycott by Muslims of US brands. And some
shrewd collectors in Baghdad walked off with debris from Saddam's
shattered statues and palaces and are now flogging them by the thousand on
Ebay.

Mobile phones

With Baghdad's telephone exchanges blown to smithereens, conglomerates
such as Marconi - which carried out reconstruction work in Kuwait after
the last Gulf war - are looking forward to lucrative work in Baghdad.
But Iraq could prove a valuable new market for mobile-phone operators.
"It's cheaper not to dig up roads for land lines," says Bobby Leach of
Vodafone. "It would be much cheaper to put a mobile phone network in
place." Vodafone itself is not looking to move into Iraq, but its Kuwait
partner MTC could be well placed.

Music and culture

The war has not produced many protest songs of note, but veteran rap
trio the Beastie Boys have come closest with In a World Gone Mad, which,
despite being available only by internet download, has built up a huge
cult following. Tens of thousands of fans have downloaded the song,
which includes these following lyrics:

First the "war on terror", now war on Iraq

We're reaching a point where we can't turn back

Let's lose the guns and let's lose the bombs

And stop the corporate contributions that they're built upon

Well I'll be sleeping on your speeches 'til I start to snore

Cause I won't carry guns for an oil war.

Other bands like Hot Hot Heat, who found their song Bandages banned
from radio stations' playlists because of possible offence during the war,
inadvertently benefited from the ban, with sales much higher than they
might otherwise have been.

In the world of movies, video sales of Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down
may also have enjoyed a small peak this year. The film, inspired by
events during America's intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s, is
rumoured to have been circulated among Saddam's military top brass in
advance of the coalition invasion.

Civil defence

Duct-tape production in the US has hit an all-time high after the
Department for Homeland Security urged civilians to get a few rolls in case
of a biological attack. Henkel Consumer Adhesives increased production
by 40% to meet the demand, while workers at Henkel's supplier, Shurtage
Technologies, found their work schedule bumped up from five days a week
to seven.

In the UK, gas masks are becoming as essential as a laptop to the
London commuter. Not really, but Brian Marin, of media company Maxmi,
spotted a hole in the market and last month set up Safety Masks, supplying
lightweight masks (a snip at £99.99) to commuters living in fear of
chemical and biological attack. "Sales have been astronomical," says Marin.
"We've sold thousands and we're out of stock."

The Lake District

Why not escape the war with a trip to the Lakes? As foreign travel
plummets, the domestic tourist trade is flourishing. There may be fewer
overseas visitors, particularly from America, but for areas like the Lakes
that depend primarily on the domestic trade it could be a vintage year,
boosted by rumours of such visiting celebs as Brad Pitt and Jennifer
Aniston. Paul Gardner of the Cumbrian Tourist Board is optimistic: "The
story seems to be a good one. People are talking about fairly
significant increases in forward booking."

Bloggers

News websites have been visited heavily throughout the war, but it's
the bloggers - unofficial diarists recording events both grand and
insignificant - who have been the real internet winners. Among the most
celebrated is the Baghdad blogger, Salam Pax, whose dispatches from the
Iraqi capital have been widely featured on these pages and elsewhere.

Another is Lt Smash, a US reserve officer who claims to be filing daily
reports "live from the sandbox". His entry last Thursday, the day after
Saddam's statue was toppled in Baghdad, read: "Hey, Saddam. This will
be my last note to you. Because you're dead. You might be walking and
breathing, hiding out somewhere. But that's a technicality. You're just
as dead as your hero, Joe Stalin. How does it feel, to watch yourself
die? It's over, Saddam.You're dead." Mrs Smash, who is also updating the
diary, tells us meanwhile that she has been eating Chinese takeaways
and not doing much washing up.

Domestic politics

The jury is still out on Tony Blair. Elsewhere in Westminster, Robin
Cook sadly squandered his early gains with his subsequent muddled
message. Chris Smith took an early lead with his dignified anti-war stance,
while Jack Straw, though hardly putting in a bravura performance, showed
slight improvement on his Afghanistan record. Ann Clwyd, a longtime
campaigner on behalf of the Iraqi people, received particular praise in
the Commons for her dogged commitment to her cause.

But the one politician whose credibility has soared - particularly in
the eyes of Blair - is the junior foreign minister, Mike O'Brien. The
former lawyer will surely be looking forward to promotion after his
stalwart defence of the prime minister throughout the war and, in
particular, a television interview in which he elegantly rebuffed Clare Short's
threat to resign.

Reconstruction

While the $100bn spoils of war are divided between the friends of the
Bush administration - giants such as Halliburton, Bechtel and Fluor - in
a ghastly feeding frenzy, it's nice to hear that a Bolivian-born woman
called Charito Kruvant looks set to win the contract to rebuild Iraq's
education system. Kruvant is the founder and president of Creative
Associates International Inc, a Washington-based consultancy which
specialises in working with governments, communities and businesses in
transition. Kruvant, who refreshingly signs the firm's website message from the
president "Peace, Charito", has been doing similar work in postwar
Afghanistan; last month the company delivered 50 tonnes of new primary
textbooks across the country ahead of the new school year.

News stories that got away

Adopting for a moment the Jo Moore approach to news management, war in
the Gulf has inevitably diverted attention from stories that would
otherwise have dominated the headlines for days. Last week's Budget,
competing with the fall of Baghdad, escaped the close scrutiny it would
otherwise have endured. The Prince of Wales got off rather lightly following
the highly damaging report by Sir Michael Peat into the running of his
household.

Lord Sainsbury's controversial donation to Labour would have got far
more coverage; as would the government's defeat in the appeal court over
its attempt to crack down on asylum seekers' benefits, which made
little mark on the news pages.

Baghdad's ritziest hotels

Despite being struck by a shell from a US tank, the rather unlovely
Palestine hotel in Baghdad was among the most immediate winners of the
coalition invasion, offering shelter to almost every foreign journalist in
Baghdad and an excellent rooftop viewing point over the slightly uneven
battle for Baghdad.

Last time it was the Rashid hotel that achieved international notoriety
when Peter Arnett reported live for CNN from its roof as the bombs
rained down on Baghdad. Twelve years later, journalists opted for the
Palestine (rooms $120 a night) because the Pentagon advised that it might be
safer on the eastern side of the Tigris where the 18-storey hotel is
situated. In the event, Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, was killed
and more were injured when an American tank fired at the Reuters suite
on the 15th floor.

Flags

The 30 flag makers at United Flag Traders in Swansea have been working
flat out during the war to meet demand. Orders for the union flag and
the stars and stripes have virtually tripled - there's even a nifty one
which combines the two. Wars are always accompanied by a surge in
nationalistic fervour, but before we start the celebrations, hundreds of
these union flags were in fact ordered by British soldiers in a doomed
attempt to protect UK troops from American friendly fire.

In the US, sales of the stars and stripes are up 25% on last year, but
the flag of the moment is that of Iraq. In an average year, United Flag
Traders would sell one or two Iraqi flags at most. Within hours of the
fall of Baghdad last Wednesday, orders for the Iraq national flag were
pouring in - in particular for the pre-1991 version, which does not
feature the words God is Great, added by Saddam Hussein.