With interest I read of latest doctored photograph from the Iraq conflict [cardhouse]. The London Evening Standard has been accused of manipulating a photograph to overexaggerate the number of Iraqis celebrating the toppling of Saddam on April 9, 2003.

I have particular interest in this event ever since I read Lewis Lapham's 'Notebook' in the most recent issue of Harper's Magazine (June 2003). I was particularily struck by this passage in his editorial:

The pulling down of Saddam's statue on April 9 acheived parity with the crumbling on the Berlin Wall, even thuogh the event took place in an all-but-empty plaza cordoned off by a perimeter of U.S. Marines, in the presence of maybe 150 pro-American Iraqis, half of them imported by the Pentagon several days earlier from London. The careful framing of the camera shots sustained the illusion of an immense and wildly cheering crowd

I'm looking for corroboration of this importing of pro-US Iraqis. Anyone?