"Allies breach Saddam’s ‘red line’!!" read the screaming front-page headline in London’s TheIndependent on April 1st. The Independent, CNN, and BBC intimated that as soon as US troopswould step over this magic line, then the Iraqis would unleash their chemical weapons - finallyproviding an after-the-fact pretext for this war. However, it was not the Iraqi generals who drew a line inthe sand, it was the "play by play analysts", the retired US generals on CNN, who drew this circle aroundBaghdad. The "red line" is a propaganda construct.