I'm an idiot. This scam has been sitting in front of me for a month, but I didn't think of this until I heard someone already got caught at it: writing fake news reports and saying they're from Iraq.

Phesheya Dube of the state-run radio station in Swaziland supposedly was giving live reports from battle zones in Baghdad for the English-language The Morning Show. Radio presenter Moses Mthetho Matsebula frequently said he worried about Dube's safety, and told him to “find a cave somewhere to be safe from missiles.” A couple of weeks ago, Matsebula even asked listeners to pray for Dube because the station supposedly had lost touch with him.

“Fellow countrymen, it looks like our correspondent in a Baghdad cave has been bombed and I have been trying to locate him to no avail and I am asking for your prayers so that you cannot lose such a good reporter,” Matsebula said Tuesday, according to a report by the French foreign press service Agence France-Presse.

Then legislators spotted Dube hanging around parliament – which tells you a lot about working in journalism. No matter how important you are (Dube is the acting head of programs for the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services) or how big a secret you're keeping, you still find yourself covering some horrible government meeting that isn't even on your beat.

When people asked him whether he'd just gotten back from the war zone, he reportedly said he'd merely been monitoring television reports on the Iraq war the whole time, then rewriting them for audiences who don't have TVs.

Heck, I could have done that. I've been deceiving readers anyway for years. The photo that runs with my column, you think that's actually me? If it were, don't you think I'd have it retaken so I didn't look like such a psychopath? I'm actually a 6-year-old child – a genius, of course. And you know what else? I … I'm actually reporting from Iraq. Yeah, you heard me.

SAHARA – I am sitting with my good friend Geraldo Rivera. He and I are discussing what the Army will be doing the next day. I suppose I shouldn't tell you about troop movements, but … oh, what the heck.

Tomorrow, they'll send a small contingent of fighters to attack the city head-on. While Saddam's army engages them, the mass of American soldiers will surprise them on the left. Isn't that clever?

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar – Geraldo got kicked out of the country, and now I'm in the doghouse with the high command here for giving away military secrets. Still, I'm traveling with the special forces as we search through the Thar Thar presidential palace 56 miles northwest of Baghdad.

I'm not worried about Geraldo, though. He can join the other journalists in Kuwait. It is only through their reports that I am finally learning what it is like to be in a hotel 50 miles from the battle zone and trying to find a DSL connection so that you can send your newspaper a report about being in a hotel and trying to find a DSL connection.

BASRAH – I am back in the good graces of the Army, and members of the 31st Light Infantry Unit are slapping me on the back and congratulating me for saving their lives. Thanks entirely to my journalism skills, I just single-handedly flushed out a sniper, though I was armed only with my note pad and several obnoxious questions that I had left over from covering a school board meeting.

“Wow, I've never seen anyone from Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard get so irritated,” said Lt. Bob Scrasha, who asked me to include in this report that he says hello to his family in eastern Pennsylvania and that the two things he misses most are his girlfriend and scrapple.

“When you started asking him about next year's bonding debt for the Carterville School District, he shrieked like he was a little girl!”

Tonight, the troops and I will celebrate. But gosh, I'm no hero.