One man’s dream to relaunch Iraq as a kinky sex destination is in tatters with the conviction of former Abu Ghraib guard and pioneering fetish caterer Charles Graner. A multi-national inspection team, meanwhile, returned from Iraq having found no trace of Saddam’s reputed arsenal of whips, masks and dildos (WMD).

Graner said it was a “gosh-darn shame” that he would probably languish behind bars for 10 years while Iraq’s state-of-the-art sado-masochism infrastructure goes to waste.

“When we walked into Abu Ghraib we found a perfectly equipped bondage dungeon. It was really just a matter of stepping into the leather G-string and picking up where Saddam left off.”

Prosecutors told the military court hearing the case that perverted entrepreneur Graner operated at the pinnacle of a naked human pyramid that was Iraq’s growing underground fetish network.

Graner said in a statement to military judges that photographs of Iraqi bondage prisoners being subjected to masturbation and humiliation sessions were only taken for the perusal of potential investors in what would hopefully become a sprawling empire of whips and chains providing much-needed employment as S&M gimps for the people of post-Saddam Iraq.

“The Iraqi economy is based entirely on oil and we simply aimed to replace that with baby oil,” said Graner, adding that refineries could be easily converted to produce baby oil, as well as low-priced vinyl products as a leather substitute for fetishists in the lower end of the market.

After the verdict was announced, Graner was slapped in handcuffs and a bulge soon became visible in his trousers as a result.

Being led to his cell, he admitted that the whole affair had left a bad taste in some people’s mouths, “a kind of warm, salty taste in fact”.