2003-04-03 - 12:36 p.m.

No time for an update over the last 24 hours as I was very privileged indeed to be spending the day as an �embedded reporter� with the 85th US Marines Unit in a place called Iraq, which is a bad country which is very sandy and loud! The marines (or �Desert Rotweillers� as you probably know them!) were all very kind to me, especially Major Kurt von Technomassacre, who, after his daily inspection of the troops and special rub down in the latrines for the privates with the nicest smiles and highest civilian kill rates for that day, let me interview him! As I sat on his knee in the command vehicle, I felt very important � I liked it when we went over bumps, and he said the screaming was something to do with the effect of the heat on the tyres! Anyway, I had just heard on �the wire�, which is a special place for reporters where news comes out, that we had just successfully demolished a Maternity Unit in Baghdad, or �Fag-hdad�, as the brave, brave boys call it from behind their four meter shield of Kevlar that they polish daily to keep it free of peasant entrails and kid�s teeth. I asked the Major (who let me call him �Daddy� for the whole interview!) why the Americans felt it so important to systematically blow up pregnant women who were probably just sat around having a cup of tea, so I could explain to the people at home why they were so stupid by not understanding. �Well, son,� he said, stroking my three day stubble, �It may look like a hospital to you, run by an international medical agency and delivering children in areas of extreme poverty, but it was a HOTBED (his voice got all loud and funny here and it tickled me!) of military activity. Those women were just another one of Saddam�s � or �Sodomy-dam�s�, as we call him in and around the unit hot tub � production line of evil. It�s important to stem potentially lethal population growth at the source, and each expectant mother we can atomise is another peasant armed with a sickle that our brave, brave, rippling boys don�t have to worry about. To the fog-headed civilian and inattentive layman, there may be no gain in incinerating day-old infants, but let me tell you � what you see as an incubator, we see as a little terrorist greenhouse. We must eliminate every possible danger, so that our brave boys, lobbing in missiles from three hundred miles away in frigates in the Mediterranean, are not put at risk. You say �Defenceless mothers nursing their new-born babies�, we say �Weapons of Mass Conception!�� At this point he became very agitated and excused himself, mumbling something about honourable discharge, and although I didn�t see him again, I got to watch one of the very big men press some buttons that would level every children�s nursery within a fifty mile radius! I was so proud to see what good work we are doing!