FLEET STREET'S armchair warriors thrilled to the news last week that soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders had defeated a large force of Shia militiamen in Iraq in an action involving bayonet charges - the first by British troops since the Falklands war. No one loves the flash of cold steel more than a tabloid sub-editor, and the hacks had a field day. "Bayonet Brits kill 35 rebels" drooled the Sun. "Our boys' victory in brave charge", said the Daily Star. The Daily Mail reminded readers that the Argylls formed the Thin Red Line at Balaclava, while the Grauniad's Stephen Moss mused upon the "psychosexual effect on the user" of fixing a bayonet to one's weapon. Among all the lovingly-reported detail of Iraqi bodies strewn across the highway and floating in the river, no one stopped to ask why the Argylls had used bayonets. The Eye has learned that the soldiers involved are furious at the gung-ho press coverage because it ignored the actual reason - that the ill-supplied Argylls were so short of ammunition that they had no choice but to resort to the bayonet or be killed.

Doesn't this rather suggest that the people that were killed might have been unarmed?