By now, everyone has seen the video of what appears to be Iranian speedboats harassing U.S. Naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The right-wing media's predictable response was to "Blame Iran First", and a giddy Bush was all set to launch Phase Three of his Illegal and Immoral War on Terror. But the Pentagon's version of the incident never sat quite right with me, and I wasn't able to put my finger on exactly why until this morning on the way to work.
I sat parked at a railroad crossing, watching the blur of boxcars speed by and feeling myself overcome by the strange sensation that it was actually myself who was moving, while the train sat motionless on the tracks, when it hit me like an empty can of Pabst Blue Ribbon tossed by my Uncle Jarvis Chomstein at last year's Chomstein Family Reunion and Colonic Rejuvenation Picnic. My Goddess, how could I have been so gullible? The whole video was an ILLUSION!!!
While it appeared to an unsuspecting viewer that Iranian watercraft were buzzing around our naval destroyers like flies on a turd, the exact opposite was true! These poor Persian pleasure-cruisers were probably out enjoying a nice afternoon on the water, when out of nowhere came a fleet of U.S. warships, a-whoopin' and a-hollerin' and givin' 'em a great big Number Six. The tiny boats sat helpless as the enormous vessels zipped circles around them, coming perilously close at times and threatening to capsize the tiny boats with their giant wakes. Since the cameras were most likely mounted on the decks of the destroyers, it created the illusion that the Iranians were actually darting around the ships! David Copperfield used the exact same trick to make the Statue of Liberty "vanish" years ago.
All this clever chicanery was no doubt conceived by Karl Rove so Bush could have a Gulf of Tonkin to follow-up his Reichstag Fire! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that all those videos of the 9/11 attacks were illusions as well, and we'll one day discover that what we really saw were two skyscrapers being quickly constructed in downtown Manhattan and then spitting out a couple of commercial airliners packed with people.
Where those people are now, only Bush knows.