Terrorists? Weapons of mass destruction? Never heard of them. "The U.N. has proven this claim is not true," said, (or lied, actually) Sheikh Ibrahim Madeiris in another televised sermon. Mosque analysis has it that the American-led war is not just a so-called oil-grab; it is also a campaign to put an Arab chicken in every American pot. The United States is "enduring now an economic crisis that nearly finishes it," the imam added. "Hence it has no choice but to start a war ... to raise the American standard of living."

Maybe when British troops are done handing out water bottles in Basra, they could be redeployed to Main Street, U.S.A.

Then there's my personal fave: the "slap in the face which Iraq gave America." This is said to have occurred during the first Gulf War, "when," Madeiris explained, "Iraq gave a knockout (punch) to America, the result of which was that Pharaoh the father (the first George Bush) lost the presidency."

Only heaven knows where to begin to pick apart this terrible collection of lies. Not that anyone is asking: "Allah," Abu Al-Hunud prayerfully concluded last week, "make their possessions a booty for the Muslims, Allah, annihilate them and their weapons, Allah, make their children orphans and their women widows."

Such sermonizing, meanwhile, represents only a microscopic look at some of the milder sludge coming from the government pulpit. And how does America respond to these and other offenses? As though truth wouldn't set these people free, but would set them off.

Much of the Arab world says 9/11 was a Zionist plot? Fine, we'll scrounge the world over, from Albania to Zanzibar, for allies in the war on Iraq, but bar Israel from the "coalition of the willing" so as not to "upset" anyone.

Hundreds of members of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement are heading for Baghdad to serve as suicide attackers for the Iraqi regime? The PA renames the main public square in Jenin for the suicide bomber who detonated four U.S. marines at a checkpoint in Iraq? Better get moving on that road map to Palestinian statehood (particularly now that the PA has a new, Arafat-appointed prime minister who is a Holocaust-denier) -- otherwise, they might not like us.