Many Americans are understandably confused over the issues in Iraq, largely because of the lies and spin spun out by the right wing media, a spin so successfully executed that many Americans firmly believe that the media is in the hands of hairy left-wing lettuce munching liberals who eat babies and are probably gay. Our ace reporter Roy Rubberplunger has been compiling a small dictionary that will help some Americans understand what the rest of the world already knows:

Cheney: the insurgency is in its last throes

meaning: the insurgency will go on for 10-12 years

Bush: Mission accomplished!

meaning: thousands more troops and innocent Iraqi people will die horribly and be maimed for life for the foreseeable future.

Rumsfeld: We know Saddam has WMDs's

meaning: he has no WMDs

Custer: We have the Sioux on the run, the redskins are hurting badly

meaning: we're about to get slaughtered

Cheney: we will be greeted as liberators with flowers

meaning: we're going to get shot at and bombed for the foreseeable future

Rumsfeld: solid progress is being made, economic progress is being made in Iraq

meaning: there's less electricity supply, less oil being pumped, more malnutrition than there was when Saddam was in power

Bush: absurd

meaning: true

Rumsfeld: the war will last 6 months

meaning: the war will last 10-12 years

Bush: unlawful combatant

meaning: anyone with a towel on their head can be kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured and killed and the Geneva convention can go fuck itself, we're Americans and we do what the fuck we like and if you disagree we've got a nice gulag in Uzbekistan where we'll push broomsticks up your bottom.

Rumsfeld: we could have had mass refugees and dislocations and that didn't happen

meaning: out of 300,000 refugees that were forced to flee Fallujah when the US razed the city to the ground 210,000 remain in camps

Bush: Disassemble

meaning: dissemble

Bush: we must prevent Iraq from being turned into a safe haven by terrorists

meaning: now that we've given terrorists a safe haven from which to attack Americans at will we must think up a way of stopping them pretty darn quick, any ideas?

Bush: Our strategy can be summed up this way: as Iraqi forces stand up, American forces will stand down

meaning: we haven't got a strategy. Let's face it we haven't got a bloody clue what we're doing.

Rumsfeld: I mean, Baghdad could have been turned into a fortress

meaning: we've turned Baghdad into a fortress

Bush: mission accomplished!

meaning: we've flattened Iraq and have secured a tiny part of it called the Green zone in Baghdad where we cower in fear coz it's too darn dangerous to go outside

Rumsfeld: the war will cost 100 billion dollars and we will only need 30,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2003

meaning: the war will cost 200 billion dollars and counting and we still have 150,000 troops in July 2005 who will be there for the foreseeable future

Bush: the enemy is trying to shake our will in Iraq just as they tried to shake our will in 9/11

meaning: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and there were no connections between Iraq and Al'Qaeda and Iraq had no WMDs and we really fucked up big time by flattening a defenceless country that was no danger to anyone while letting Iran and North Korea develop nuclear technology.

Bush: withdrawing troops would be a mistake and sending more troops will also be a mistake

meaning: we never had enough troops there in the first place which allowed the insurgency to grow and terrorists to walk in from Saudi Arabia and as their numbers grow and grow and the country becomes more and more unmanageable we're going to keep exactly the same number of troops there cowering in their bunkers because that will show them we mean business.

Bush: We need to prevent Iraq from becoming a safe haven for terrorists

meaning: since ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was no longer a good excuse, and toppling Saddam was hardly an excuse for all this carnage, and witht the mayhem and murder Iraq is a piss poor example creating a beacon of democracy so now our new mission is preventing the country from becoming a terrorist haven. A different reason for the war in Iraq coming up, watch this space!

Bush: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will take the fight to the enemy. We will defend our freedom. Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.

meaning: we'll attack a defenceless country, kill tens of thousands of innocent people and make America safer by giving terrorists an easy target to aim at.

Bush: Bring it on!

meaning: over 1,700 US troops dead, tens of thousands maimed, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi people dead and maimed.

yechydda,