Switzerland Invades Liechtenstein (by accident)

This is a true news item from today's New York Times (with a few minor additions by me).

A battery of 170 Swiss soldiers accidentally invaded the tiny republic of neighboring Liechtenstein (population 33, 987) on Thursday. According to AP, after wandering 2 kilometers into foreign territory, the soldiers realized their error and rushed back to their own country. Liechtenstein officials didn't seem to mind much. ''It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,'' the government said.

The White House, meanwhile, was quick to seize on the incident. "Actually, as it turns out, we really invaded Iraq by accident," said Bush spokesman Tony Snow at the morning press briefing. "As the Swiss have now shown, these things can happen to the best of us."

According to a declassified intelligence report released Friday morning by Vice President Dick Cheney's office, in March 2003 a brigade of US soldiers stationed in Kuwait inadvertently crossed into Iraqi territory looking for beer.

"The soldiers then encountered a group of Iraqi citizens who, by pure coincidence, were pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein with cords tied to the dictator's sculpted head. Upon seeing the uniformed Marines the crowd immediately greeted them as liberators and initiated a broad scale rebellion. When the Marines failed to show up for dinner service at their base, a search party of 150,000 soldiers was sent to investigate."

Snow went on to explain that once in Iraq it just seemed logical to military planners for the US to maintain its presence there. The intelligence report also noted that the "Mission Accomplished" banner that President George W. Bush displayed months after, during his aircraft carrier landing off San Diego, was actually one created by the Marines to mark the expected return of their fellows with the anticipated beer.