Dwight Meredith points me to this startling revelation about the DC snipers from NewsMax:
On Wednesday night, shortly before the capture of Muhammad and Malvo, Chief Moose acquiesced to the sniper’s demand and read publicly a statement:
“You asked us to say, ‘We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose,’ ” Moose said, swallowing hard. “We understand that hearing us say this is important to you.” …
A caller to Ed Martin’s talk radio program on WGY in Albany, N.Y., says if you take the first letter of each word in the phrase “like a duck in a noose.” and exclude the last ‘a’, the acronym spells “L-A-D-I-N.” Now, that’s not exactly the way bin Laden’s family name is commonly spelled, but Muhammad and Malvo apparently never won a spelling bee.
You just can’t argue with logic like that. I prefer to mock it, myself, so I’ll present you with this bit of relevant dialog from M*A*S*H:
Frank: (Nervously) “Huhuhuh….”
Flagg: (Takes magazine) “This won’t look good on your record.”
Frank: “But sir, it’s only Reader’s Digest, I..”
Flagg: “Not when you eliminate the third, fifth, and sixth letters. Then it’s Red’s Digest, comrade.”
Indeed.
It’s all translation from Arabic anyway. Osama’s name has typically been spelled “bin Laden” in the English-speaking press, but his father’s construction empire translates its own name into “The Binladin Group”. Go figure.
Oh for the love of G-d…
Apparently these people are too busy coming up with weird conspiracy theories to read the newspaper or watch the news to learn that the phrase came from an old Cherokee legend.
If anyone wants the link or story, just e-mail me.