WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is refusing to either confirm or deny that one of its unmanned Predator drones targeted the classic Bob Dylan album track “Isis” late Sunday night.
Witnesses said two missiles slammed into the second track on side one of the iconic 1976 album “Desire” just before midnight. The six minute, 58 second tale of a young groom who marries his bride before he learns the value of loyalty was completely destroyed in the attack, and several adjoining songs, including track 1, “Hurricane” and track 3, “Mozambique” were seriously damaged. Shrapnel also tore through several tracks on side two, although it’s understood that “Sara,” an emotional tribute to Dylan’s first wife, escaped serious damage.
Sources indicate the first missile struck the start of verse two, just as the narrator is setting out for the cold in the north, and moments later a second missile hit the middle of verse six.
This latest apparent blunder comes a week after an airstrike by a U.S. Air Force B-52 on a section of the River Thames known as the Isis, in the historic English university town of Oxford.
In that attack, eight 500-pound satellite-guided bombs were dropped on the tranquil half-mile stretch of river popular with punting tourists and student rowing teams. While no serious casualties were reported, local anglers say that the shock waves from the blasts have seriously affected fish stocks for several miles upstream and downstream.
One anonymous defense source suggests the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, had deliberately changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS, in order to blend in with innocent Bob Dylan songs and peaceful stretches of river. “Ultimately the responsibility for this sort of tragic collateral damage lies with the terrorists themselves,” the source said.
At a press conference Monday, a Pentagon spokesman, while refusing to comment on the alleged strike, asserted that the U.S. military does not intentionally target folk music. The carefully-worded statement leaves open the possibility that Dylan’s controversial 1965 embrace of electric amplification may have left him exposed to attack.