Bagpuss, there are Iraqis being bribed by the military to do things just like that, and Rumsfeld not only said so in his briefing yesterday, he begged Iraqis to come forward and aid the American troops in any way they could.

As I watched the pictures of the statue being toppled, and the banner which was not about "US wankers" but about the US peace activists who went to Baghdad to act as human shields, I wondered how much the military had paid all those men to create the photo ops that were shown on the nightly news as the "historic television moment" of the day.

Those TV pictures were pure Anglo American propaganda. They were so obviously staged, I can't believe the "jubilant liberation" crap is being swallowed by so many otherwise intelligent people.

Sort of like the SARS fear mongering. Thousands of people die of influenza every year. So why is it this year, that "international travel" is being used to whip up global hysteria and frenzy about "foreigners" spreading a new (sic) deadly disease?

It seems to me the US mainstream media in particular is doing all it can to whip up xenophobic and anti-internationalist sentiments at every turn.