MUCH is being asked of every last one of us whose lives have been transformed during the past few days of war.

At the extremes, we've either become news junkies or been driven far from the radio and television, seeking sanctuary from words and pictures we no longer wish to stomach.

The stream of live coverage to the heart of our homes has demanded instant interpretation - moments aired cheek-by-jowl with talk of the fog of war, when it's impossible to sift fact from fiction, supposition from certainty, propaganda from pure news.

If the way war is prosecuted has changed - and with it the means by which the world shifts and shapes its opinions - there's one thing that hasn't.

War leaves human flesh and spirit as devastated as ever, something many had gladly forgotten until this weekend.

The first two days brought beguiling optimism that it would be a swift business.

But the events of the past couple of days have been a reminder that war remains Private Ryan, not PlayStation.

Anyone under the illusion that it would be any other way is either too young to know better, or too wishful in their thinking to see the obvious.

With the talking long since over, three thoughts are realistic. First, a regime that has slaughtered thousands of its own people needs stopping.

Second, the handful of regrettable coalition deaths so far is a tiny fraction of the number of our troops in Iraq.

Third, with Baghdad to come, we should steel ourselves for more grim news, more lives lost and more cowed prisoners paraded as propaganda tools in front of the cameras. That's what war is.