PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME how we can trust bloggers who say they’re blogging from the war zone. What if they’re not?

It’s a valid concern of course — but it doesn’t apply solely to bloggers:

LISTENERS to Swaziland’s state radio heard “live” reports from war correspondent Phesheya Dube, purportedly from Iraq, but then saw him walking around Mbabane.

Radio presenter Moses Mthetho Matsebula asked listeners to pray for Dube, the acting head of programs for the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services.

“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.

On Thursday – a week after the Iraq war started – Dube went to parliament, where curious MPs asked him when he had returned from the Iraqi capital.

He reportedly admitted he had been monitoring television reports on the Iraq war, then interpreting them for Swazis without TV sets.

Heh.