It is half past 11 on a Monday night and the woman from the Korean Broadcasting System is talking about the war. I don’t speak a word of Korean, but the images on the screen behind her, originally from al-Jazeera, need no translation.

Pictures U.S. television networks, and many, many newspapers here, have opted not to show.

I haven't tuned into Korean TV -- aired locally on WYBE-TV -- to see dead bodies, just a different perspective on George and Donald's Excellent Adventure.

Maybe the Korean anchor is explaining the horrors of the images. Maybe she is talking about what might be in store for the "Penin-shula" should George and Donald turn their sights on another member of the Axis of Evil.

In Korea, the men cut down on a battlefield in Iraq are just foreign soldiers in a faraway conflict.

Such is not the case in the States, where editors and producers have opted against showing these pictures out of respect for dead fellow Americans.

I understand that point. The last thing I want to see is a corpse shot of anyone I know. Still, I would show such gruesome images.

We are at war. Our people are killing and being killed. Our tax dollars are being spent by a president for whom most of us didn't vote on a war of dubious morality.

The people in charge of what you see and read and hear should provide the entire story, horror and all.

The people in Baghdad and Basra and Mosul and Umm Qasr don't have such a choice.

No surprise, of course, that al-Jazeera would air such pictures. The fiercely independent Qatar-based Arabic-language network, which aims for "objective and balanced global news coverage and analysis," is reporting from an Arab perspective. Whether you agree or disagree with the president, one thing is clear: We have invaded an Arab nation and most of the Arab world is in an uproar as a result. Given that our media has been more than happy to show dead and captured Iraqis, al-Qaeda members and Taliban, al-Jazeera's goose-and-gander tack is understandable.

China, which opposes the war, sees our attack on Iraq as serving "the goal of seeking world-wide domination," according to People's Daily commentator Huang Peizhoa, as quoted by CNN.

CNN is also reporting that a leading Chinese defense think tank believes the U.S. will attack North Korea "as early as this summer."

Chinese hardliners, according to CNN, are advocating giving weapons to Pyongyang to help it "defend itself against a possible U.S. missile strike at its nuclear facilities."

Russia, which also opposes the Iraq attack, is heading toward a similar war footing -- the first step of which was having the Russian defense industry provide Iraq with anti-missile systems and night-vision goggles just days before the U.S. attack, according to the Russian press.

"Military units of the Russian Far East get ready for possible border conflicts," reports Pravda, as translated by GuluFuture.com. "It seems that the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Russia, President Vladimir Putin, realizes the anti-Russian essence of America's aggressive transgression."

Here at home we may be shielded from the full brunt of what is taking place in Iraq. But still we are a jittery nation awaiting the expected reprisals.

Just ask Andres Sandoval and Diego Navarro, two popular and hard-working Old City restaurant employees, who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and whisked away by authorities.

It all started at about 6 p.m. Tuesday when Navarro, a prep cook at Eulogy Belgian Tavern, was trying to take home a set of dumbbells he had been given. The dumbbells were in a cardboard box wrapped in duct tape. But their weight -- about 70 pounds total -- proved more than Navarro could handle, so he placed the box down on the corner of Second and Chestnut and ran into Margherita Pizzeria to ask his friend, Sandoval, to help him move the box.

In minutes, bike cops, patrol cars, firefighters, U.S. Customs agents and members of the Philadelphia Police bomb squad swarmed the scene, cordoning off the area with yellow police tape.

Things got a little heated when a couple of kids on bikes slipped under the tape, causing an officer on the scene to grab them, setting off a macho expletive duel. But it was quickly determined that the box was no weapon of mass destruction, just dumbbells.

An honest mistake, but Navarro and Sandoval -- Mexican nationals -- were taken in for questioning.

Neither had proper identification, according to PPD Sgt. Douglas Stanford, so they were taken to Ninth Police District headquarters for further investigation into their immigration status. The two men were later cleared and released.

You can't blame the police -- they absolutely did the right thing. It's not their fault the men didn't have ID.

But even as the tension broke and the all-clear was given, the unspoken thought among everyone at the scene had to be that finding a real threat is only a matter of time.