21.   This is an astonishing story that would have stretched the imagination of Dickens until it snapped, and Richard de Mille is fully up to its telling.

22.   To think that they could be perennial Big Ten powers is stretching the imagination, although Barnett has the players thinking anything is possible.

23.   Washington has always publicly disavowed any attempts to kill President Saddam, though it stretches the imagination to believe it has not tried.