Zionists are spreading drugs and prostitution, they say, and Americans -- not Saddam Hussein loyalists -- bombed a procession of U.S.-trained police cadets. U.S. occupiers also are withholding electricity on purpose, the story goes.
Lies and half-truths -- readily believed by a nation of people who learned long ago to be skeptical of rulers' motives -- are complicating America's mission in Iraq, fueling anti-U.S. sentiment as troops struggle to quell a growing uprising.
"They want to destabilize Iraq," said Ali Mohammed Said, a 26-year-old law school graduate who blamed U.S. soldiers for a blast on Saturday that targeted a graduation parade of U.S.-trained police cadets in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Seven were killed.
"They want to drive a wedge between us so we fight each other while they stand by and watch," he said.
U.S. officials dismiss such claims as absurd. The Ramadi blast, the say, was the work of pro-Saddam insurgents. The American-led provisional administration is using radio waves, newsletters and a planned TV station to dispel the rumors.
After an Iraqi newspaper ran a story claiming that U.S. Marines raped a young girl and left her for dead, U.S. officials persuaded the publisher to run a retraction and fire the offending reporter.
When a newspaper reported that American night vision equipment can be used to see through women's clothing, U.S. civil affairs troops visited the editors personally to let them look through the goggles.
Despite these efforts, Iraqis, who grew up on a steady diet of anti-American rhetoric, are being bombarded by a fresh wave of disinformation, much of it coming from an explosion of new newspapers. The country now has about 150 newspapers, up from 14 before the war.
Some of the claims are breathtaking:
* The Assaah newspaper on Saturday claimed that the Israeli government ordered the modification of its export laws to flood Iraqi markets with Israeli goods. The paper urged Iraqis to carefully check Taiwanese or Chinese-made appliances for hidden Stars of David.
* The same paper recently reported that American helicopters swooped down on construction stores in the southern city of Nasiriyah to steal building supplies.
* Word is traveling on Iraqi streets that U.S. patrols are blaring messages from loudspeakers telling people they won't have electricity until attacks on Americans stop.
* A shadowy Iraqi group calling itself "Wakefullness and Holy War" issued a statement on Iranian TV claiming responsibility for recent attacks and announcing that Jews have arrived in Baghdad to spread "sex, prostitution and drugs among young people."
Many of the claims provoke a visceral reaction among Iraqis, especially when they relate to women's modesty and Zionism. Newspaper articles appear daily claiming that Jews are buying up property in Baghdad and other cities in order to turn Iraq into another Palestine.
L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, has declared that newspapers can print what they wish as long as they do not incite violence.
"The way we counter this is not by muzzling them but by reaching out to them and trying to get them to talk to us directly," said Maj. William Thurmond, a coalition spokesman. "From my perspective, the best weapon against mistruth is the truth."
Sometimes, though, the truth is as uncomfortable as a lie.
An Associated Press photographer recently witnessed a U.S. soldier at a checkpoint taking $600 from the glove compartment of an Iraqi driver. Alerted to the offense, his sergeant searched his pockets, found the money and returned it to the driver in full view of an Iraqi crowd.
The incident, which also appeared on Al-Jazeera Arabic television, is being talked about throughout Iraq.
Thurmond acknowledged that one or two unfortunate incidents, even if uncommon, "could undermine the good will that we're trying to establish here."
"Every soldier is an ambassador for the coalition," he said.
In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, resident after resident complains bitterly about U.S. raids on their homes. They say troops steal money and valuables and mistreat detainees.
"They take the children too. Little boys, like him," said 40-year-old Tikrit resident Adnan Flayeh, pointing to a child standing beside him.
"Maybe they are Jews," said Jabber Rajab, 50, a retired officer in Saddam's disbanded army. "Their first aim is to break the nose of every Arab leader."
U.S. troops raid homes throughout Iraq to stem an insurgency that is seeing daily ambushes on soldiers and threatening to overshadow efforts to rebuild the country.
For Iraq's U.S. occupiers, winning the propaganda war may be as important as winning the military war, especially if the violence feeds off the rumors.
Those efforts suffered a setback last week, when an explosion at a mosque killed 10 people in the restive town of Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad.
Residents of the neighborhood insisted a U.S. aircraft fired a missile into the mosque's courtyard, destroying a shack where a local cleric was giving Quran lessons.
"First I saw a green laser pointing on Sheikh Leith's room from two cars. Then the cars drove away and the plane dropped the bomb," said 73-year-old resident Abdullah Jassem Ensayif.
U.S. Central Command said the explosion was "apparently related to a bomb manufacturing class that was being taught inside the mosque."
Maj. Geoffery Watson, the intelligence officer for the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, appeared to contradict the Centcom account when he told reporters in Fallujah that he knew of no intelligence on the ground pointing to a bomb-making class.
Sifting through stories to find the truth is no easy task in postwar Iraq.
Asked about the mosque blast, Hilal Abed Saleh, a 35-year-old car mechanic in Fallujah, said: "I don't know what happened. I can't repeat the lies of others because I know God is watching."
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