The most recent film featuring the intrepid Batman - Batman Begins - sees the caped crusader set aside battle with his usual freakish, lone adversaries, and instead take on a well-organised terrorist network determined to destroy Gotham city in order to return humanity to equitable social order.

In keeping with this new direction, the latest and newest Batman comic follows the further exploits of Batman engaged at the point end of twenty-first century warfare against dastardly terrorists who will stop at nothing to achieve their insane ends.But this time Batman's are not merely the fantastic invention of Hollywood hacks. This time the terrorists are the dangerous militant Islamic organisation Al Qa'eda. And this time Batman, fighting on the Side of Right in the Planetary War on Terrorirsm, is on a propanganda mission in addition to his usual self-imposed brief requiring the righteous humiliation of his enemies.

The patriot responsible for producing the new Batman comic says he was enthusiastic about the opportunity to depict the adventures of Batman in defence of the free world. Comic book writer Harry Miller freely admits the comic is designed as propaganda in support of the war effort of the United States and the West in the global war on terrorism: 'It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda.' Miller's comic will be the only official record of Batman's engagement with al Qa'eda as Batman is turned into a symbol for liberty and the new compassionate imperialist United States.

But rare footage of the quasi-superhero Batman on a clandestine mission against Islamic terrorists for the Forces of Light deep inside Iraq provides irrefutable evidence of an appalling tragedy that could give hope to al Qa'eda operatives and end forever the high hopes of comic book artists and pys-ops units that American superheroes might turn the flagging fortunes of the occupying Western forces around.

The footage, received by the Irony Party from anonymous benefactors*, is all the more authentic because it is so closely reminiscent of sections of recent vision released on the Net by the propagandists of al Qa'eda and of the Iraqi resistance depicting the deaths of the United States' finest at the hands of competent rebel snipers. (for more on this see Irony Party's article Cheney Outgunned By Iraqi Quail Hunter.)

The new video (featured above) is no more than five seconds long, and apparently recorded by a member of the Iraqi resistance or one of the insurgent terrorist organisations operating in Iraq. Batman is seen standing on a rooftop in broad daylight under a blazing Iraqi sky. He changes position, and at one point appears to be looking directly at the cameraman. But with his weak bat-like eyes, the defender of Gotham and the West is clearly unable to discern the position of his adversary.

Batman turns and strolls across the roof, but before he has taken more than a few paces, the terrorist sniper fires a fatal shot, and the hapless hero slumps out of sight behind a wall.

Just before Batman begins to fall the camera jumps, suggesting it is actually mounted on the sniper's rifle, as is thought to have been the case in previous footage of resistance snipers in action against Coalition forces in Iraq. Whether the Caped Crusader's assassin might have been the legendary Juba, or perhaps the insidious mythical al Qa'eda leader al Zarkawy, will probably remain forever unknown. But the tragic figure, Batman, now inextricably entwined in America's unwinnable Iraq war, has become an unwitting martyr for the West and, ironically, a trophy for the evil terrorist masterminds who, seething with unreasoned, blind hatred for all that is free, fair, judicious and democratic, continue to plot the downfall of Gotham.

 

*this is not the first time that the Irony Party has been sent visual evidence of US superheroes coming unstuck in the Iraqi theatre of war. At the time of the invasion of Iraq the Irony Party received and published irrefutable evidence of the unfortunate demise of Captain America at the hands of renowned second-generation construction magnate and philanthropist Osama bin Laden.