Stephen,
a) Welcome back stranger.
b) How anyone, let alone any serious news organization could say,

" Wednesday, 16 October, 2002, 11:41 GMT 12:41 UK

Voting day brought many public displays of patriotism.
Iraqi officials say President Saddam Hussein has won 100% backing in a referendum on whether he should rule for another seven years.
There were 11,445,638 eligible voters - and every one of them voted for the president, according to Izzat Ibrahim, Vice-Chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council.
The government insists the count was fair and accurate."

with a straight face just shows how far gone much of the MSM is.

I thought the same thing when CNN's Christiane Amanpour reported over the weekend (with a straight face and not so much as a blink) that she spoke with someone who told her that, before the war, "we were all Iraqis, not Sunni, Kurd and Shiite." No mention of the Shiites used as front-line fodder in the war with Iran. No mention of the thousands of Kurds gassed by Saddam. Just an idyllic wonderland of Iraqi solidarity, right, Christiane?