People around two US airbases (Assad in Anbar, and Ali bin Abi Talib in Nassiriya) had been noticing unusual nighttime takeoffs and landings of fighter planes, along with unusually tight security for several weeks, and anonymous Iraqi Defence Dept people had concluded it was American or Israeli (more the latter since the Anbar flights seemed to be coming from Jordan), and they pointed out that from the Nassiriya base you could in in Iranian airspace in 5 minutes and to Bushehr very quickly.

Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari dismissed the report on Friday.

"We have no information about Israeli jets using Iraqi airspace for rehearsals," he told AFP.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, an Israeli military spokesman told AFP he was aware of the report and said, "I have no information on this."

The US military did not comment on the report.

I am not an expert in the field of missile technology, but the missiles in the faked photograph appear to be anti-aircraft ground to air missiles or artillery rockets. The slanted attitude of launch speaks to that. No? Anti-aircraft missiles would be a threat to aircraft, not to Israeli cities. Artillery rockets are a battlefield weapon.

If those missiles are not ballistic missiles, then several interesting questions arise:

1- Which governments are fooling around here?

2- If these are not ballistic missiles, why are the MSM propagating the implication that this photograph displays missiles that are a threat to Israel?