AN AMAZING MATEHMATICAL RECOVERY: Last week, the US were snorting that, for all the claims of looting, only thirty-eight items were listed as missing from Baghdad's museum. Now, somehow, they've managed to recover thousands of them. Perhaps they've been cut up into little pieces?

 
SAVING PRIVATES, LYING: Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Iraqi side of the Jessica Lynch story is that she'd have been freed twenty four hours earlier, only the ambulance they tried to send her home in was fired on by her colleagues and had to turn back. Gotta love US military intelligence. (Might want to leave that bit out of the TV Movie, guys).

 
THAT MAKES IT ALRIGHT THEN: Having tried to float the idea that the looting of Baghdad wasn't that bad (Fox tried to play along, squawking that apparently only twenty-nine items were listed as stolen from the main museum - before being forced to admit that it was kind of tricky to write up a list as all the records had been trashed), now Ashcroft is trying a new tack. It was organised criminals wot done the robbing - well, them and the odd Fox news employee. We're not sure why this is supposed to make us go "Oh, that's alright then" - actually, it makes the American invasion seem even more rubbish if they had so little control in the country huge gangs of art thieves were able to roam about helping themselves to artefacts, doesn't it?

 
HOW HUGE THE JUBILIANT CROWDS?: They pin a lot on the numbers of people who turned out to cheer the fall of Saddam (we wish we could be defeated in such a way that we disappear totally unharmed off the face of the earth). So why did they need to photoshop the crowds to make them appear bigger?