25 June—As I was pumping ethanol-corrupted gasoline ((which destroys engines and benefits nobody but corn-farming conglomerates) into the faithful old Lexus yesterday, a fellow victimized pumper who happened to be a Monitor reader asked where I had found the report and text of Ayatollah Khamenei’s war declaration posted on Monday. He asked because he couldn’t find it on the Al Jazeera website (which, by the way, is very good) and it sounded to him an awful lot like President Franklin Roosevelt’s request to Congress to declare war on Japan after the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor.

And, truth be told, the percipient reader with the Mercedes-Benz was absolutely right. Because as far as I know the old ayatollah never said anything like it in Farsi or English nor issued any press releases declaring war. What’s worse (or better?), the spurious declaration of war was indeed FDR’s speech to Congress on 8 December 1941 recast and updated for the occasion. A parody, a send-up. Hey, it’s The Litchfield Monitor.

After a mutual giggle, then, the Mercedes man berated me, however gently, for not having explicitly warned faithful and trusting readers of the satirical intent of Monday’s disquisition. It appears that he had been taken in by the satire and was under the impression that the crafty old ayatollah had plagiarized FDR.

I thanked the sharp reader for falling for the scam but didn’t apologize for doing the dirty. I had no idea it was that good. In all events, I pointed out that there was in fact at least one not particularly subtle (but rather brilliant) clue in Monday’s disquisition that I was funning. Read it again and you’re bound to see it. Or not.

Coincidentally (or not), today marks the 75^th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. It was on 25 June 1950 that the Northern Korean People’s Army (the bad guys, the commies) invaded South Korea (the relatively good guys because they weren’t commies).

Although neither Korea was a member of the United Nations at the time, the effectively ineffective Security Council condemned the dastardly invasion and called upon member states to help the good guys in the south repel the red bastards from the north. The People’s Republic of China (Red China), also not a member of the U.N. at the time, supplied lots of men and matériel to North Korea, as did the Soviet Union (the Ruskies), which, although a member of the U.N., ignored resolutions it didn’t like. Plus ça change. But neither did it exercise its Security Council permanent-member veto.

To comply with the United Nations intervention resolution and contain the dreaded red menace, then, President Harry Truman, by executive action as commander-in-chief, deployed United States troops and resources for what was technically considered a three-year-one-month police action. It was referred to that way because Truman neither sought nor received a declaration of war from Congress. But Congress was none the less supportive.

And Congress has always been supportive of military actions authorized by presidents even without declarations of war. The War Powers Resolution of 1973, intended to rein in Richard Nixon and presidents who followed him, doesn’t count because it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on . . .