Wanda, where art thou?

After my last post ws published in a school newspaper, this reponse came in:

Dear Editor,

I was utterly shocked and appalled to read Noah Klinger’s recent article of February 29 entitled “The surge to nowhere.” As a frequent reader of The Brandeis Hoot, I am somewhat familiar with Klinger’s doctrinaire liberalism; as well, his thinly disguised Ba’athist sympathies are no secret.

Nonetheless, it is surprising that even an ideologue such as Klinger could be so totally divorced from reality. During the month when the US troop surge in Iraq hit its apex, the United States lost almost 80 soldiers and marines in combat. By December 2007, that number was less than 20 demonstrating beyond a doubt that the surge has been and remains a stunning success.

In that same time period, fatalities among the Iraqi security forces plummeted from over 200 a month when the surge began to 75 in December 2007. The decline in deaths from sectarian violence has been even more dramatic from almost 1,100 a month when the surge began to a mere 200 a month in late 2007.

But there’s no telling this to Klinger who would rather we had left a genocidal dictator like Saddam Hussein in power than admit that our democratically elected President and his allies in Congress are succeeding in Iraq.

-Wanda Tinasky

Somerville, Mass.

OK. So some lady in Somerville thinks I'm a Ba'athist. All in a day's work.

Wait. "Wanda Tinasky' is not a real person. It was a pseudonym for many years attached to a series of suspiciously erudite letters ostensibly written by a bag lady in northenr California.

So, who really wrote Wanda Tinasky? The current favorite is postmodern novelist and notorious recluse Thomas Pynchon.

Who lives in Somerville.

Weird...