Imagine waking in your hotel room and throwing open the balcony door — to be greeted by 40 US Navy Seals doing press-ups on the beach.

US Navy SEALs are stepping up their investigation into recently-published photographs that show freshly-captured prisoners and grinning commandos sitting or lying on hooded and handcuffed detainees in Iraq.

RON ZIEGLER, the press secretary who famously called the Watergate break-in a third-rate burglary and was the voice of the Nixon administration during the biggest political scandal in American history, has died of a heart attack. He was 63.