The Hindu Business Line : Saddam loses to Harry Potter in `war of words'

FRENCH fries may now be called `freedom fries' while French toast is now referred to as `freedom toast' in some restaurants in the US, including cafeterias at the US House of Representatives.

Potato growers in Idaho in the US want to go one step further and use `American fries' instead of French fries, while humorists wonder whether `freedom doors' will soon replace French doors and `freedom leave' supplant French leave.

But such tokenism apart, there appears to be little interest in learning more about Iraq or the rationale for invading that country, especially when one considers what people in the US are reading.

Unlike in the period immediately after the events of September 11, when books that featured the predictions of Nostradamus, the 16th century seer, and tomes on terrorism sold like hot cakes, this time around no such pattern appears to exist.

At online bookstore Amazon.com, the only evidence of some interest in Iraq is Jarhead by Anthony Swofford, a retired US marine's memoir of the 1991 Gulf War, which is at number four on the bestseller list.

Topping Amazon.com's bestseller list are books such as the still-to-be-released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Trading Space-Behind the Scenes - a book on decorating, and Stupid White Men.

In fact, the first apparently analytical book on the need to invade Iraq is The Threatening Storm: The case for invading Iraq, which is at number 30 on the Web site's list of top sellers.

The picture is not different at Barnesandnoble.com, the other major online bookstore where Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tops the list of bestsellers.

Here, no book related to Iraq is in the top 50. Jarhead is the only book with a remotely Iraqi theme that finds its way onto the bestseller list at number 29.

It is a slightly different picture on the New York Times list of top sellers in the hardback category, where Jarhead comes in the top five while Hatred's Kingdom, a book that examines the alleged links between Saudi Arabia and global terrorists, occupies the ninth slot.

Osama bin Laden still appears to interest readers in the US, with Hunt for Bin Laden taking the fourth spot on the New York Times bestseller list.

Books such as Target Iraq: What the news media didn't tell you, The War over Iraq and so on do not seem to figure very high on the reading list of most people in the US.

Perhaps it's just that a plate of `freedom fries' and Harry Potter are more tempting than Saddam: King of Terror or History of Iraq.

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Saddam loses to Harry Potter in `war of words'