Serendipity...

...or possibly synchronicity. Or morphic resonance. Or possibly coincidence. Or maybe just ignorance on my part. I've only just realised that 'Gunny Highway' - the nom de plume of the person asking very sensible questions about rules playtesting - comes from the Hollywood version of the US invasion of Grenada. Although Reagan's real-life version of events didn't owe very much to fact and memorably ended with the US military slapping themselves on the back and giving out awards in a way that would have made even the Academy of Motion Pictures blush.

Gummy talks to the trees

Now I've never seen the film (I have nothing against Clint Eastwood's acting - 'Paint Your Wagon' is a masterpiece), but, as readers probably don't know, I built the airport at Point Salines; the one that caused all the problems. Or at least I was the project accountant. "Hang on a minute" I hear you say "you're not Cuban!" (1). No, and there lies much of my issue with Ronald Reagan's, er, lies. Anyway, the time is not right for me to publish my perspective on 'Urgent Fury'. It's either too soon or too late. The 30th anniversary release of UK government papers on the issue a couple of months or so ago simply led to the press (including very disappointingly the Guardian) repeating the official US version once again. One would think that given the subsequent experience of the deliberate falsehoods promulgated to justify the invasion of Iraq that they might have been slightly more questioning. But no.

"Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying!"

(1) I did once, many years after the events of 1983, win a Salsa dancing competition in Cuba (absolutely true fact) and so won't deny that I have a little of the Latin love god in me.