Blithering idiots, busily blithering...

Blithering idiots, busily blithering...  So a week or so ago, I read the story about the U.S. returning the ancient rhyton (at right) to Iran's cultural heritage chief – who was delighted to receive it.  The general wisdom was that the gesture portended some sort of “thaw” in U.S. – Iranian relations. That's all of a piece with The One's uninformed and arrogant foreign policy, and I didn't think about it any further.

Until this morning, that is, when I read that the rhyton was a fake, and not even an ancient fake – it's probably less than 20 years old.  Furthermore, the U.S. government knew it was a fake – they seized it originally because it was a fake.

I can only think of two possibilities here:

1.  Incompetence on a gigantic scale, perpetrated by blithering progressive idiots.

2.  Diabolical cleverness, delivering a head fake to tweak the Persian noses.

Given The One's propensity to appoint blithering idiots, one of those seems much more likely than the other...