Potential Military Installations

It's getting harder to tell the parody from the real thing:

Afterward, attack helicopters cruised throughout the day over Saddam's hometown, swooping low over villages and farms as rescuers picked through the charred wreckage of the aircraft.

Late Friday, U.S. troops fired mortars and a U.S. jets dropped at least three 500-pound bombs around the crash site, rattling windows over a wide area in an apparent show of force. Other U.S. jets streaked over Tikrit after sundown.

As opposed to:

NUMBER TWO: I have declared war on the next continent.
FORD: Declared war? But there's no one even living there.
NUMBER TWO: Yes, but there will be one day. So we've left a sort of open-ended ultimatum.
FORD: What?
NUMBER TWO: And blown up some military installations.
CAPTAIN: Military instillations, Number Two?
NUMBER TWO: Yes, sir. Well, potential military installations. (pause) All right. Trees. And we interrogated a gazelle.

Still, Billmon has the best comparison of the hour:

In retaliation, American troops backed by Bradley fighting vehicles swept through Iraqi neighborhoods before dawn Saturday, blasting houses suspected of being insurgent hideouts with machine guns and heavy weapons fire.

"This is to remind the town that we have teeth and claws and we will use them," said Lt. Col. Steven Russell, commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment...

Compared to:

Captain Carpenter: We've been on red alert for three days sir, and still have no sign of Mr. Neutron.

General: Have we bombed anywhere? Have we shown 'em we got teeth?

Captain Carpenter: Oh yeah, sir. We've bombed a lot of places flat, sir.

The latter quote from the "Mr. Neutron" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Only the joke and the real thing are virtually indistinguishable.

Aside from the fact that real people are dead, that is.

Billmon, of course, has more.

(/) Roland X
"It's all hoo-hoo, yuck-yuck, and then BAM WHAM BLAM!" --Daffy Duck, "Looney Tunes, Back In Action"