Or us. Preferably us. He can always recant and say, "Oops, I was wrong" in his bunker. We'll be long gone by then, so what does he care?

Very little, in all probability. Bush is a bit like an unhinged iconoclast who has arbitrarily decided he doesn't believe in cows, and loudly and repeatedly denies their existence until you get so annoyed you drive him to a farm and show him a cow, and he shakes his head and continues to insist there's no such thing. At which point it moos indignantly, but he claims not to hear it, so in exasperation you drag him into the field and force him to touch the cow, and milk the cow, and ride around on the cow's back. And, finally, he dismounts and says, "That was fun'n'all, but dagnammit, I still don't believe in no cow." And then he shoots it in the head regardless, just to be on the safe side. Just so it isn't a threat.

Come to think of it, Bush is so vehemently fact-phobic, he might as well expand the war on terror into an outright war on reality, in which anything palpably authentic is the enemy. There'll be an "Axis of Real Stuff", encompassing everyone and everything from hairbands to dustmen, all of which Must Be Eliminated. "If it's provable, we can kill it." That's our new motto. God's on our side, because he can't be proved or disproved. He's one of our most valuable allies - the others being Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, ghosts, the bogeyman, and Bigfoot. Not to mention a vast fleet of UFOs, which the enemy won't have a chance of defeating because it never existed in the first place. Our armies won't be constrained by the laws of physics, and even if we lose, we'll simply say we won, even if we have to say it from an afterlife which doesn't exist either. That's the power of unwavering denial. It makes deities of us all.

Of course, by rejecting anything he doesn't want to hear, Bush is simply proving he's human. Humans hate the truth. Once someone's made up their mind, they rarely change it, no matter how much evidence to the contrary you show them. Changing your mind or admitting you were wrong is seen as weak, as though life itself were an almighty pub quiz where incorrect answers are penalised. The only option left is to interpret the facts in a new and interesting way that supports your overall position. This is what Bush has done. He says that since the report indicates that Iran halted its weapons programme in 2003, there's a clear possibility it could start it up again. The very fact that the Iranians don't have a nuclear bomb proves they might still develop one. Therefore, Iran is dangerous.

That's a clever thing to say, because a) the future is unknowable, so it's impossible to tell him he's wrong, and b) the more he says it, the more likely it is to come true. Since Bush has shown that he'll view Iran as a nuclear threat regardless of whether it's got the bomb or not, the Iranians might as well build one. What have they got to lose?

Also, the report doesn't say whether the Iranians are developing a giant laser beam capable of sawing the sun in two, but that's no reason to assume they won't be starting work on it next week. Picture a world in which Ahmadinejad holds us to ransom by threatening to plunge one sawn-off half of the sun into the Atlantic, sending 900ft waves of boiling water rushing toward our shores. We can't let that happen. We've got to get in first: drive a space shuttle into the sun and blow the damn thing up before the enemy get their hands on it. It might solve global warming too. Let's hope the Pentagon is across this. Don't let us down, guys. Knock that baby out.

Another benefit of ignoring the report and piling in regardless is that at least this time round we'll know for sure that the invasion and subsequent war is based on a false premise in advance, which beats finding out later and feeling a bit disgusted with ourselves. Forewarned is forearmed. It's a narrative tweak which keeps things fresh and interesting. The TV series Columbo used a similar device: instead of being served a common-or- garden whodunnit, you'd see the murderer committing the crime at the start, so the fun came from watching his plan slowly unravel. There's no danger of that happening to Bush though, because he doesn't believe in plans either. So nothing unravels. It's a win-win situation. He should unleash the hounds tomorrow. Go ahead, George. We'll be fine, out here, outside the bunker. Don't you worry about us.

· This week Charlie watched what felt like the entire year's worth of television in preparation for his Screen Wipe review of 2007: "It was like being a crap Doctor Who: I didn't go back very far and I achieved nothing." Charlie felt sorry for the canoe couple: "The authorities should free them for Christmas on the grounds that they have entertained the whole nation."