Someone somewhere had the bright idea to draft a letter that looked and sounded as though it were written by a real member of the U.S. military serving in Iraq, an encouraging letter that talked about how well things were going in the city of Kirkuk, etc. The idea (whether it was initiated by a fellow soldier in this unit, or someone higher up) was that significant numbers of soldiers from this unit in Kirkuk could sign copies and send them in to their hometown newspapers across America. This was recently discovered by some folks at a newspaper in Olympia, Washington. Apparently, they received identical letters from two different GIs and began digging. Heres a clip from the article.
“The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we are a large part of why that has happened,” the letter reads.
It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you.
Id like to imagine that its the work of the Karl Rove political machine attempting to turn the tide of public sentiment back in favor of our actions in Iraq. More likely, however, it was initiated by a fellow soldier who felt strongly that they were doing good work in Iraq. At any rate, I thought that it was an article worth sharing.
And it gave me an idea. What if I were to ghostwrite a letter and have each and every one of you send it in to your local papers? That might be a kind of cool exercise. What would the letter be about? Lets pick something fairly universal and innocuous. How about the cost of school lunches? Or, the conditions of the public toilet facilities in the local library? Or how about just commenting on the Mayors unprofessional tone? Lets think of something really good. And lets not focus too much on the war, unless its fairly indirect. I like the idea of something fairly mundane (with perhaps a few hidden messages thrown in) popping up all at once around North America. I bet I could even have someone translate it into Spanish. Lets all give it some thought, shall we?
Id like to write more, but Ive got this huge project that needs my attention. Linette and I had the bright idea this afternoon to make 500 flyers (each with a small, full-color image of the new Crimewave cover glued onto it) announcing the release of the new issue. We didnt realize at the time, however, just how big of a pain in the ass it would be to cut out 500 small images and then glue them one at a time onto flyers. Its killing my neck, but its got to be done. We promised one of our distributors that wed get them in the mail tomorrow. (The distributor is then going to mail them out to each of their clients that doesn’t already carry Crimewave.) The good news is that it looks really cool and it will probably convince a few smaller, independent stores to stock a few issues.
Ok, I have to get back to it now.
