An e-mail press release reached me just now, purporting that numerous copies of a phony but very realistic edition of The New York Times with a front-page headline declaring, ” Iraq War Ends,” surfaced this morning. The paper is dated July 4, 2009.

The political missive came with a video.

The video shows actors marveling over the “good news,” reporting the end of the war in the Mid-East and Afghanistan. It also takes a shot at the Times management, showing a bespectacled editor-type harrumphing in front of the newspaper headquarters in Manhattan.

According to the press release after “an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different press and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers tood ready to pass them out on the street.”

More than a million copies? Thousands of volunteers? Hard to believe.

In any event, it’s not being presented as a hoax, (Sort of reminds me how the old hoaxer Alan Abel weaseled his fake obit into the Times many years ago) but as a political statement.

“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,” said Bertha Suttner, who is indentified as one of the faux Times writers. “We’ve got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven.”

I can’t imagine the Times is all too happy with this.