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Semi Truths

a semi-regular column of Truths, Half Truths, and Mostly Truths by Semi.

Volume I, Issue 25 · posted Nov. 22, 2001
URI: http://www.semitrue.com/pages/2001.11.22.html

SAFETY IN NUMBNESS

My, but we live in interesting times...!

When last I wrote (SEMI TRUTHS 24: "Guns and Butter"), the most seasoned prognosticators still dared to utter the word Quagmire to describe our situation in Afghanistan. We were all steeling ourselves for a long and drawn-out fight with an implacable foe during a harsh and bitter winter.

In very short order, however, our opponents scattered, our allies advanced, and important objectives were swiftly accomplished.

This Taliban, this oppressor, skulked away in the night, and the good people of Afghanistan celebrated by partaking of all the newly-found freedoms they had previously been denied: giddy men and women danced in the streets, played western music, and shaved their beards. Unconfirmed accounts report that at least one liberated Afghani, having been cut off from western media sources for many long years, grabbed an American journalist and demanded to know the names of Michael Jackson's and Lisa-Marie Presley's children.

Meanwhile, across our great nation, we who had been cowering in the shadow of uncertainty stepped blinking into the warm light of liberty, secure once again in our knowledge that no adversary could stand against the collective might of a freedom loving people and that evildoers everywhere were now defeated.

Oh yeah, and it's safe to fly again.

do you feel safer? email me

HUMBLE PIE

Now I will remove my tongue from my cheek to make room for my foot in my mouth.

In my last column, I rolled up my sleeves and plunged headfirst into the morass of our military campaign in Afghanistan. Some of my cautions ("we cannot win this fight with a mismanaged antiseptic, high-tech, laser guided bombing campaign" ... DOH!) have proven to be excessively pessimistic, others ("our first order of business: feed and shelter the refugees") have yet to be played out. The picture of our troops storming through a war-ravaged countryside, stepping over the bodies of the hungry and the dead, while calling "Osama? Osama, where are you?" is an obscene scenario, but we live in obscene times.

I must now sheepishly give this administration more credit than I was previously willing. We still have a long way to go, but I think we may be headed in the right direction.

I take some comfort in pointing out that others in our esteemed media have jumped prematurely to unfounded conclusions.

Last week, two British correspondents in Kabul breathlessly reported on documents they had found in a ruined building that purportedly housed members of al-Qaeda which detailed how to build atomic weaponry. John Simpson of the BBC waved papers before the camera that appeared to be plans for a thermonuclear device, and Anthony Loyd of The Times in London wrote on the "jargon that anyone could understand, including notes on how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass producing a nuclear chain reaction and eventually a thermo-nuclear reaction...."

A few days later, the online magazine The Daily Rotten revealed how the journalists may have been taken in by a very old internet parody. A humor newsletter called The Journal of Irreproducible Results (now The Annals of Improbable Research) published in article in 1979 titled "Let's Build an Atomic Bomb!" and a quick reading of the parody reveals several key sentences that correspond with the articles that the reporters found. The original article is obvious satire, with advice including "obtain about 50 pounds of weapons grade Plutonium at your local supplier" and to "wash your hands with soap and warm water after handling the material".

Next up, startling plans by Islamic terrorists to spread anthrax via email!

For the full story, see:

http://www.dailyrotten.com/archive/159929.html

SEMI TRUTHS has learned a lesson from all this, and we will stick to good old-fashioned satire from now on.

want some pie? email me

WISHBONE

Following a tradition first established by President Lincoln, George W. Bush pardoned the White House turkey just in time for Thanksgiving. However, in a scandal reminiscent of previous administrations, inside sources report that the pardon may have actually been granted in return for unnamed personal favors. When presented with this accusation, the White Bush House issued a press release referring to the allegations as "bird droppings" and stated that "the President, like all Americans, looks forward to stuffing his bird on this national days of thanks..."