Well, we're all having a chuckle over the story of the Iraqi insurgents who claim to have taken a U.S. soldier hostage and who posted a photo on a Web site of the soldier that's actually a photo of a doll. Oh, those silly terrorists!

Allow me to don the tinfoil hat for a second: Any chance this is U.S. disinformation?

It's not exactly comparable, but according to Milt Bearden, a thirty-year CIA veteran, now retired, we've spread toy disinformation before:

While I managed the C.I.A.'s covert war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the mid-1980's, I came upon the enduring myth of the Soviet army's use of booby-trapped toys designed to attract and then kill or mutilate Afghan children. While gratified by the grief this story was causing the Soviets, I shared my skepticism about it with C.I.A. headquarters.

Langley's response was swift. The toy bomb story, I was told informally, though not an American creation, was a favorite of both the C.I.A. director, William J. Casey, and President Ronald Reagan. It fit their view of the evil empire and fell in the same category as the story of the K.G.B. plotting the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II - too good a yarn to check or dispute. So we ran with it for three more years. I even had copies of the Toys "R" Us catalog sent anonymously to the local K.G.B. chief.

The current Web posting, according to AP's story, is at ansarnet.ws -- which is here. Judging from the English-language text, it's a discussion forum. Presumably anyone can sign up and post. Why not Americans posing as an Iraqi insurgent group?

You know, if our guys want to make the insurgents look silly, it's probably not a bad psyop, tactically. Hell, why not?