Forget Jim Carrey - Saddam Hussein is the real Grinch who stole Christmas - at least according to one Web site. It claims the Iraqi dictator is buying up the world's supply - such as it is - of PlayStation 2 consoles to build military supercomputers. According to a WorldNetDaily report, US customs, the FBI and military intelligence - a contradiction in terms if we ever heard one - are investigating shipments of Sony's next-generation games machine to Baghdad. Some 4000 consoles have made their way to Iraq, those agencies reckon. And that, says the report, is depriving American kiddies of their requested Christmas prezzies, poor dears. It's hard to know what's worse: children engaging in (virtual) acts of mindless violence or the Republican Guard sharpening its skills on Tekken Tournament. Or even - and this is the angle a "secret" document leaked to WND takes on the matter - a stack of the machines being wired together into some vast, supercomputer configuration to be used to take over the world.

Sounds a bit Billion Dollar Brain to us - ie. bollocks - but we don't suppose there's a good reason why Iraqi computer scientists can't get Linux running in Beowolf configuration on 4000 PlayStation 2s for the purposes of subverting Western democracy. Though we note that Florida seems to have done a pretty good job of that already...Cabins With Hot Tubs In The North East "Most Americans don't realise that each PlayStation unit contains a 32-bit CPU - every bit as powerful as the processor found in most desktop and laptop computers," one unnamed military intelligence source told WND. Golden Yellow Drapes"Beyond that, the graphics capabilities of a PlayStation [2] are staggering - five times more powerful than that of a typical graphics workstation, and roughly 15 times more powerful than the graphics cards found in most PCs."Smart Car Headlight Bulb Clip

'Sony marketing mouth' would be a better description. "Applications for this system are potentially frightening," said another intelligence source. "One expert I spoke with estimated that an integrated bundle of 12-15 PlayStations could provide enough computer power to control an Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV -- a pilotless aircraft." Thanks for clarifying the meaning of the words 'unmanned' and 'aerial vehicle' - we'd have never figured out they were the same as 'pilotless' and 'aircraft'.This sounds almost as bad as the scare stories from the early 1980s of Sinclair ZX-81s being nabbed by the Soviet military so for their Z-80a CPUs - handy for controlling ICBMs, we were told. That story proved to be nothing but Cold War paranoia and survivalist jack-off material, and that's pretty much what the WDN report appears to be. "Bundled [sic] PlayStation computers could also be used to calculate ballistic data for long-range missiles, or in the design of nuclear weapons...

Iraq has long had difficulty calculating the potential yield of nuclear devices - a critical requirement in designing such weapons," says the WND story. WDN describes itself as "a fiercely independent news service created to capitalise on new media technology and opportunities, to reinterpret the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty, an exponent of truth and an uncompromising disseminator of news". Or, as we say over here, 'conspiracy theorists'. Put it this way, if Saddam isn't buying all those PS Twos, you can bet Elvis or JFK certainly is... ® Flash storage buyer's guideFollowing the recent announcement of a new war game called Six Days In Fallujah from Japanese publisher Konami, TechRadar spoke with ex-SAS man and well-known chronicler of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Andy McNab.McNab, author of Bravo Two Zero and a number of other autobiographies and fictional accounts of war, was keen to stress that UK-based critics and commentators of Konami's game need to understand that "culturally it is totally different in the US.""

In America it is not as if this is "shock horror"," said McNab, "everybody has been watching it on the news for the last 7 years." The ex-SAS man also thinks the culture of videogames is far more deeply ingrained in US culture, telling us that "my mate's granny lives in an apartment block in NYC and she has a gaming room of her own with two settees back-to-back and two flat screens – and she's in her late eighties!" GTA and Call of DutyThe ex-SAS man sees little difference between Six Days In Fallujah and "killing Nazis or drug dealers or whatever it may be," reminding us that the "US Army uses shoot-em-ups as a recruit tool – it has a travelling gaming fair that travels round malls to recruit lads. Culturally they are more up for it."Ironically, while McNab agrees that the game IS entertainment, he argues that "the media has used the war as entertainment anyway," and that "the war has turned into entertainment, with viewers more interested in visuals" than understanding the complex terms of the conflict."

The hypocrisy is in the fact that when the media wants a 'shock horror' story they will focus on something like this," adds McNab."In Afghanistan last year, in those last few months of Basra, and lads there have got their laptops and they are playing games on their laptops in their free time…The people who are fighting these wars are playing these games."For a truly in-depth 'game-amentary' surely, some critics argue, we should show the point of view of the numerous groups involved in conflicts?"Maybe we should show the civilian or the insurgents' side of it, sure," notes McNab, adding, at the same time, "the media doesn't do that in covering the real conflicts!"In McNab's opinion, it really comes down to the cultural differences and the depth of feeling and understand about what Fallujah meant to Americans."In Fallujah the Americans lost more soldiers than the whole of the British Army has in Iraq and Afghanistan combined," he says. "So Americans are aware of it… it is in their psyche… so if the game stands up and offers Americans those soldiers' stories, then, why not? "