Hard To Believe

Last week, my mother-in-law sent me an e-mail detailing all of the amazing coincidences paralleling the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. You know the one: Lincoln was elected in 1860, Kennedy in 1960, one hundred years apart. The first name of Lincoln's private secretary was John, the last name of Kennedy's private secretary was Lincoln. Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater. And it goes on and on. She asked me what I thought of it. I wrote back that I believed that if you stared at any group of random bits and pieces that the human mind would eventually create links between them: The butterfly effect.
And now, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy in an audiotape Tuesday accused Shiite Iran of trying to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida terror network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the September 11 attacks. Sounds crazy, right? Not to many living in the Middle East. Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor. "The purpose of this lie is clear — (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.
By another bizarre coincidence, my mother-in-law's e-mail also included the "truth" about the careful folding of a new U.S. twenty dollar bill. It reveals not only an image that looks vaguely like a burning Pentagon, but a startling if not equally vague image of the twin towers aflame. What were the chances that all of these things would occur to me over the course of just one week? I'm going to have to say, "One hundred percent." Now that's what I call a conspiracy.