After fierce fighting around Umm Qasr for the last three days Coalition Commanders have reached the conclusion that Saddam must have split his Republican Guard and stationed some of them in the town. Er...are you seriously telling me that all those bods in the War Office hadn't considered this possibility before? I mean, seriously, we're talking about Saddam here...the master of propaganda. Like he'd really want two thirds of his troops to surrender without a fight in the first few hours. Those chaps in the Pentagon are really on the ball, eh?

Reaching the decision that the prolonged fighting wasn't doing much good for their own propaganda Allied aircraft took the remaining one hundred or so Iraqis out with bombs. "We're in the middle of nowhere here," said Colonel Seigfried Weathercock. "The news transmissions aren't going out live and can be edited by our 'Ministry of Truth' personnel, so it doesn't really matter if we kill a few civilians in the process. Nobody back home will ever find out and, after all, they're only rag-heads and we mustn't forget that."

Meanwhile reports are coming in of friendly fire...or as the military term is 'Blue on Blue'. An RAF fighter plane (possibly a Tornado) has been shot down by a Patriot missile. "This is inconceivable," commented an army officer. "In the last Gulf war the Patriot missiles failed to hit a single Scud. We've actually got one of the bastards to work!"

Not content with killing British troops (everybody's got to have a hobby) an American soldier was arrested today after rolling a hand-grenade into a tent and blowing up seven of his colleagues. One man is dead and the rest are seriously injured. Apparently the soldier responsible 'had a grudge.' "Pity," said Major General Tommy Franks. "If this is what he's capable of with his fellow soldiers, just imagine what he'd have done with Iraqi civilians." Not so much a blue on blue as a red-white-and-blue on a red-white-and-blue.

More murder and mayhem after breakfast folks.