The Shades

Do US infantrymen, especially those in the Special Forces, wear sunglasses because they like to ogle women? Yes! according to clerics in Falluja, Iraq, they impart X-ray vision. "We have heard that the Americans' sunglasses allow them to see through our women's clothes," said a man standing across the road from the contested US headquarters. "We are very angry to think that they can see our women naked." Or, are they rather, as the left-wing website Indymedia suggests, a necessary ornament of the well-dressed, modern assassin: "US killers ... in their distinctive fighting gear, which includes baseball caps, jeans, expensive sunglasses and specially adapted rifles"?

The truth is rather more prosaic. The troops wear them as eye-armor, not simply against the sun or desert grit, but against low velocity fragments. Developed to meet the requirements of impact sports, some models, notably those made by Wiley-X, Bolle and Oakley, are able to withstand a 12 gauge shotgun blast from 10 yards away. Moreover, their high-end optics filter out the blue-end of the light spectrum, which improves visual acuity under certain conditions. Most are available in a wide variety of light transmissability, from the nearly clear to the very dark.

 

Why would anyone think sunglasses imparted X-ray vision?