Wild West comes to Iraq
Shopper rejects grocery dividing bar at checkout
Assassinated Baghdad governor concedes defeat
Doctors warn of Bridget Jones Diarrhoea

President George W. Bush has clarified his plans for Iraq, saying that when he promised to implement Western-style rule of law he was actually referring to the Wild West.

Mr Bush revealed the whole Iraq invasion was planned after a pizza and ribs night with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney watching spaghetti westerns and old Clint Eastwood flicks.

“The current rootin’-tootin’-shootin’ Iraq where the lawmakers are gunned down by desperados and sent to Boot Hill is ’sactly what we was ’spectin to happen,” he said.

“Yahsir, but don’t you worry little lady, us regulators will run those outlaw gun-toters and bomb-slingin’ no-gooders right the hell outta town.”

Mr Bush concluded with a hearty “YEEEEEHAAAAR” and tried to ride his pet Scottish terrier Barnie off into the sunset, a move that White House spokesman Scott McClellan said had “limited success”.

Shopper messes with other shoppers, checkout chicks

A Mossman shopper confessed he likes to play mindgames in the checkout queue by not putting the plastic dividing bar between his and other customers’ grocery items.

“People get really agitated about it and sometimes the checkout chick will even intervene and put the divider in to avoid a confrontation,” Lance Trentham chortled.

“But there seems to be no set protocol as to who puts down the divider, the person in front or behind.”

Mr Trentham maintained he is not obliged to put down the divider and only needs to allow a reasonable gap between his groceries and those in front, “although what constitutes a reasonable gap is admittedly a grey area”.

Coles checkout operator Rachel Harris said the idea of the divider was to stop groceries from being put on the wrong person’s docket. “The other day I got someone’s tin of baby corn spears on the wrong docket and it’s a lot of farting around to reverse the transaction,” she said.

Baghdad governor murdered, bows out of election

Baghdad governor Ali al-Haidari has admitted that his assassination on Tuesday makes it unlikely he will be returned to office in January 30 elections.

American president George W. Bush said elections would go ahead regardless of the fact that most Iraqis don’t plan to vote for fear of getting shot or blown to bits. “In the U.S. we know that it doesn’t matter who votes and who doesn’t, it’s all about how you COUNT the votes,” he said.

“And what the Irackies have to realize is that getting shot is part and parcel of freedom. Americans are free to get shot every day and Iraqis are now enjoying that same freedom at about the same rate.”

Militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, meanwhile, urged Iraqis to accept his vision for the nation’s future government, under which anyone who disagrees with him would be killed.

“Sound familiar?” he said.

Zellweger, Grant blamed for irritable bowel in cinemagoers

The author of Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding, is being sued for plagiarism by the author of an as-yet unpublished novel about an English girl named Gidget Sloan who suffers an explosive bowel complaint.

Doctors, meanwhile, have warned that Bridget Jones’s Diarrhoea may be a legitimate medical condition, based on some cinemagoers’ reaction to the latest film adaptation.

“We’ve known for a long time that Hugh Grant gives many people the shits and when you mix that with Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger you get quite a strong laxative effect. We are getting people coming in who can literally shit through the eye of a needle after seeing the film,” said Dr Fergus O’Flaherty.