Pranksters Distribute Fake New York Times Declaring ‘Iraq War Over’
The Yes Men identified as the team behind the joke pages
by Ed Pilkington
The US defence department yesterday declared the end of the Iraq war and the immediate withdrawal of all troops, prompting an admission from Condoleezza Rice that the Bush administration knew all along that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, according to the New York Times.
On second thought, that introductory paragraph needs a little clarification. The New York Times proper didn’t report the end of the Iraq war. But a spoof 14-page “special edition” of the newspaper, circulating free on the streets of Manhattan today, did carry those items. It was printed in a form that was so high quality and technically accurate that many New Yorkers were nonplussed, backed up by an entire “New York Times” website that equally faithfully mimicked the original.
Dated July 4 2009, and boasting the front-page motto: “All the news we hope to print” in a twist on the daily’s famous phrase “All the news that’s fit to print”, the fake paper looks forward to the day the war ends, and envisages a chain of events that would be manna from heaven for American liberals.
Source: Common Dreams
New York Times Special Edition Video News Release – Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.