Pentagon to excavate all Iraqi deserts in search for WMD

After failing to find any conclusive evidence of WMD at the 100 or so sites that the Pentagon and CIA assured the world contained them before the war, coalition forces are to begin excavating all of the deserts in Iraq to a depth of five metres.

The area to be covered is roughly the size of Romania, but Pentagon planners are detrmined to find a justification for their slaughter of innocents no matter what it takes.

Some of the funds designated for the reconstruction of Iraq are to be diverted to the project for the further destruction of Iraq which has been called: "Operation Total Excavation". The Pentagon said that it would not have time to stop and catalogue any mass graves that it may stumble across in the process as the troops can not stay in the country for any longer than 20 years or so.

Military planners are still discussing options for storage of the sand with one plan calling for the entire nation of Kuwait to be covered to a depth of 15 metres. The sand would be sold back to the Iraqis at a later date as one official explained: "It can only be a good thing in helping to open up trade relations in the region following years of sanctions."

However, some officials at the Department for Homeland Security in Washington DC have called for the sand to be shipped back to the US on top of the tankers carrying the free Iraqi oil. They said they would use it to fill sandbags to surround every major airport, power station and skyscraper in the US to protect them from attack by al-Queda.

But a secret source in the White House assured us that the sand was headed for the oilfields of Alaska where it would be used to make the Texas oilmen and friends of the Bush family feel more at home in "a simulated arctic desert environment".

The Pentagon stressed that they would have no time for archaeologists with their petty concerns and that soldiers have been issued with orders to shoot on sight anyone found wandering through the desert with chisels.