I suppose now the Red Cross can be added to the list of dangerous subversives who deride the war in Iraq for their own crazy left-wing reasons. After all, they have released a report cataloguing the sheer horror of life in Iraq under American occupation.

The Red Cross, as always, is careful not to apportion blame – its reputation depends on its perceived impartiality. But the title of the report, “Civilians Without Protection: The ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Iraq” and the contents, divided into sections such as “A conflict that spares no-one”, “Sliding to disaster”, “Medical care under threat”, “Dirty and scarce – the water crisis”, kind of suggests that the US occupation is not an unmitigated success.

Yet the lunatic right continues to deride anyone who criticises the war as a defeatist. And Bush himself pretends that everything is going really well, it’s just that the liberal media refuses to report it. In a speech on Friday, for example, he said “When a family decides to stop depending on militias to protect them or a young man rejects insurgency and joins the Iraqi army, it doesn’t usually make the evening news.”

So now the Red Cross is also part of the conspiracy to cover up the successes in Iraq? It’s getting to be quite a big conspiracy these days…