AMERICA’S SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO DO AS IT DAMN WELL PLEASES

AMERICA’S SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO DO AS IT DAMN WELL PLEASES

John Chuckman

I read that the U.S. is claiming a “sovereign right” to try Iraqi officials as war criminals. I thought it was a nice touch, including, as it does, an allusion both to Bush’s scholarly observations on Nazis and an assertion of rights. Rights are always good, aren’t they? Even when they are the rights of conquest?

So, you attack a country for no other reason than an arrogant demand for “regime change,” overwhelm its relatively puny armed forces, kill thousands of people, and claim a “sovereign right” to bring its leaders to trial? This threatens to become the model for international affairs in the twenty-first century, the banana-republic concept applied on a world scale.

America has refused to have anything to do with the International Court for War Crimes, but then the Creator never granted international institutions that purity of essence that is America’s peculiar birthright. International institutions are corrupt. They are foreign. And they are not inclined to do things in the American way.

America, blubbering endlessly about its rights and the way it sees things, so often displaying impatience over listening to the other 95% of the human race, easily forgets the many incontestable horrors it has bestowed upon the world. General Pinochet’s murder of perhaps 15,000 Chileans plus a few Americans who got in his way gets barely a nod of drowsy recognition. The “boyz” chugging down frosty Cokes while napalming Vietnamese villages or the blood-soaked savagery of Cambodia’s rice patties are mostly forgotten. Few Americans ever caught, or cared to imagine, the screams of the Shah’s victims having their finger nails extracted.

There have been so many of these good works that a full list would resemble a reference book rather than an article. Dealing with them on American television would make evening watching a drag, so they are forgotten, and America lumbers on to its next bellowing claim that something about the world stands in the way of its full enjoyment of rights and privileges.

Of course, none of America’s chosen monsters ever saw a trial or tribunal by the United States. A few of them still live in quiet retirement. Why? Because they served American interests faithfully. If Hussein is tried, it will be precisely because he failed to do so. That’s certainly an inspiring reason for bombing the hell out of a country.

But America is doing its very best, with precision missiles and gigantic bunker-busting bombs, to be sure Hussein is murdered rather than captured. His trial, even if it does happen to fall to America as a sovereign right, would be exceedingly inconvenient for relations with the Arab world.

The United States asserts another arrogant claim, wrapped in different words, to justify its mistreatment of prisoners from Afghanistan. It ignored the Geneva Conventions, shackled hundreds of them up, flew them, blindfolded and strapped into cargo planes, to new homes in Cuba, which consist of cages far away from everything they know, with no access to lawyers or relatives, a form of slow torture used to extract information. Never mind that information gathered in this way is more likely to tell you what you want to hear than what actually is, and never mind that treating people in this way violates every principle America likes to say it holds sacred.

There is still another such claim, again expressed with altered words, to proclaim its right to determine who will govern Iraq when America’s destructive tantrum is over. After all, it has had such success in Afghanistan on which to build. After killing thousands of innocent people there, wrecking the country’s infrastructure, and sending tens of thousands fleeing their homes in terror, it set up a government whose key achievement to date is monthly assassinations.

That dire concern over women’s rights in Afghanistan, something carefully tailored to the psychological needs of soccer moms who might have had a doubt or two about bombing villages, has faded into the mountain mists. An excellent proxy measure of America’s violent achievement in Afghanistan is offered by a Canadian documentary film maker who observed that outside Kabul, virtually 100% of women still wear the burka. The figure in Kabul, the only place policed by foreign troops, is about 70% and that comes with a great deal of abuse.

With a record like that, why wouldn’t you feel justified in violently reordering the affairs of the planet? Quick success in Iraq will undoubtedly set Washington’s ideologues’ glands pumping and mouths watering. There’s already talk about blasting Syria. Clearly, Iraq’s shell game with weapons of mass destruction was continued on a grander scale, with the elusive weapons shifted to Syria for safekeeping, perhaps shipped in milk trucks by night. Hussein wouldn’t use them to protect his life. No, after defeating the United States, he undoubtedly planned to reclaim them for another diabolical plot.

The possibilities must seem endless to Cheney, Condi, Rumsfeld, and Co. And, indeed, regretfully for the rest of the planet, they undoubtedly are.

A BRIEF GLIMPSE OF INSANITY

A BRIEF GLIMPSE OF INSANITY

John Chuckman

The following transcript was mailed to me in a plain brown envelope. The anonymous sender scratched a note about it being found by a peace-demonstrator in a dumpster near CIA headquarters in Langely, Virginia. I have no way of authenticating it, although the tone is clearly plausible. The first part is irretrievably blurred, and it appears that a good deal more is missing.

ULTRA TOP SECRET
EYES ONLY: NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL

(THIS IS WHERE GREASE AND WHAT SMELLS LIKE SWEET-AND-SOUR SAUCE MAKE SEVERAL PAGES UNREADABLE.)

PRESIDENT: “By the way, Condi’s happy ’bout your work at the UN.”

CIA DIRECTOR: “Thank you, Mr. President. We’re only too glad to help.”

PRESIDENT: “Condi’s gettin’ transcripts twice a day. Can’t say I’m happy ’bout
what I’m hearin’, but she says it’s good stuff we can use. She
calls ‘em our bank account for defendin’ democrat values.

“Ya got every one of them goddam UN ambassadors bugged?

CIA DIRECTOR: “If I may brag a little, Mr. President, we’ve even bugged the
apartment of the French ambassador’s mistress.”

PRESIDENT: “I knew you guys’d come through for me. I was kinda pissed-off ya didn’t get more stuff tyin’ al Qaedas in with Iraq. Nobody gonna tell me
different – them bastards is as tight as two liberahs in a pay
toilet.”

(LOUD, PROLONGED LAUGHTER IS HEARD FROM BOTH PHONES.)

CIA DIRECTOR: “I’m sorry about that one, Sir, but we did try our best.”

PRESIDENT: “Well, we all know Arabs is tricky about coverin’ up their trail.
I reckon they’re somethin’ like Injuns.

“I got some other stuff here needs your help.”

CIA DIRECTOR: “Yes, Sir.”

PRESIDENT: “The Iraqs are pretendin’ to destroy them El Sandwich missiles.”

CIA DIRECTOR: “Mr. President, if I may, our best information indicates the al Samouds are being methodically destroyed.”

PRESIDENT: “Well, I guess that jus’ shows I got better information on that one
than you boyz. I know Iraq is pullin’ a fast one, an’ they ain’t gonna get
away with it!”

CIA DIRECTOR: “Yes, Sir, how can we help?”

PRESIDENT: “Well, I want ya to get right in there an’ bomb them missile sites.”

CIA DIRECTOR: “If you recall, Mr. President, our last assessment rated those missiles as not being a serious threat.”

PRESIDENT: “Damn, I know that, but we still gonna bomb ‘em.”

CIA DIRECTOR: “I don’t see how we could do that, Sir, without killing a lot of
Iraqi technicians.”

PRESIDENT: “It seems as ya’ll ain’t gettin’ my drift here.”

“I don’t care ’bout their piss-ass missiles. Though we ain’t exactly
gonna say that to the press.

“It is the goddam Iraqs we wanna bomb. They’re screwin’ things up for
us bad. How can I be expected to lead a war with them out there
smashin’ up missiles? I mean this is serious, an’ ya’ll gotta get right on
it!”

CIA DIRECTOR: “But, sir, if we do that, we’ll kill the UN weapons inspectors supervising…”

PRESIDENT: “Shiiit, ain’t that jus’ collateral damage? Ya gotta take risks in
war. Hell, I learned that back durin’ Nam when I went
AWOL from the Texas National Guard on a hell of a bender.

“This here’s war, an’ it won’t bother me none.

“Anyhow, it’ll serve ‘em right. What the hell they doin’ over there
interferin’ in my war? You boyz get a few dozen of ‘em, an’
ol’ Blix ain’t gettin’ in our way again any time soon.”

CIA DIRECTOR: “Yes, Sir.”

PRESIDENT: “Hell, we tried getting’ ‘em lost on wild goose chases with those
weapons tips of yours. It didn’t do a lick of good. They still over
there nosin’ into everything. They holdin’ up my goddam war!

“An’ the Iraqs destroyin’ missiles is makin’ me look bad. I’m
mighty puked of hearin’ from Frenchies an’ all them other whiners….

“I want ya’ll to figure out the best way of doin’ it. Maybe use them drain things of yours…”

CIA DIRECTOR: “Mr. President, you mean drones?”

PRESIDENT: “Use whatever gets the job done. Get some
suggestions from the Rummy an’ the boyz

(THE TRANSCRIPT ENDS ABRUPTLY HERE.)

MISSILES AIMED AT THEIR MAKERS

MISSILES AIMED AT THEIR MAKERS

John Chuckman

While you can believe very little of what you read or hear on the subject of Iraq, there is some reason to believe reports that Saddam Hussein is hesitating to comply with Hans Blix’s order to destroy his al Samoud II missiles.

I understand that the actual tested range of this missile only marginally exceeds its permitted range of 95 miles, and it may seem unreasonable that anyone should expect that a rocket’s burning fuel can be designed to take it precisely so far and not a bit farther in the absence of the precision guidance systems this missile lacks. Of course, Iraq’s enemy, Israel, has highly-accurate missiles with ranges many times the range of the al Samoud II, and they are nuclear-capable. And with an American armada surrounding Iraq, threatening invasion, any leader would naturally be reluctant to give up a weapon. But I truly hope the reports are exaggerated.

The world’s diplomats have worked a small miracle so far in stopping the crazed ideologues in the White House from launching a rash, unnecessary war. And most of the world’s people support the diplomats in this. There is spontaneous revulsion at Mr. Bush’s fevered statements about Iraq.

Mr. Blix has done a hero’s work trying to establish a rational inspection regime as an alternative to war while being subjected to a storm of abuse and misinformation from the White House.

Saddam Hussein has twice subjected Iraqis to needless death and misery on a large scale with failed wars against Iran and Kuwait. True enough, in both cases, he was encouraged by the amoral foreign policies of the United States, and in the case of the war against Iran, he was more than encouraged, he was supplied with tools and weapons and had a number of his brutal acts excused and covered up.

Despite being well aware of Hussein’s tyranny, thinking people reject Bush’s ignorant comparisons to the 1930s in Europe. They understand that diplomacy and respect for international institutions are not the same thing as “appeasement” or “capitulation.” They understand that it was precisely Bush-type ideologues who refused to let the United States even join the League of Nations after World War I, that many of these same ideologues profited doing business with Hitler while Britain valiantly struggled, and that it is the same ideologues who now disparage the UN, refusing to pay their share of costs unless they see the institution reduced to approving whatever it is they demand.

But if Hussein refuses to comply with Mr. Blix’s orders he does validate one comparison with the Hitler era. Hitler insisted on bringing Germany to utter ruin when he understood that his grand scheme had failed. Germany suffered terrible, needless destruction and reprisals because of Hitler’s nihilism. And so too will the poor, already-broken people of Iraq if Hussein opposes Mr. Blix.

Hussein should not mistake thoughtful opposition to war as consent to his ignoring any orders from the weapons inspectors. Hussein actually has a chance to demonstrate genuine statesmanship now by assiduously avoiding war. For this war will not only cripple Iraq, it may, just as Hitler’s insistence on self-immolation set conditions for the Cold War, bring a hostile and dangerous new order to the entire world.

Success in a high-tech war against an insignificant opponent can only raise the bloodlust of the fanatical neocons now governing the United States and increase their contempt for diplomacy and international institutions. It can only encourage them in their inclination to treat the rest of the planet the way Israel now treats its neighbors.

This possible development represents the broadest and most serious threat to the world’s peace and freedom in our time. One almost cannot imagine what terrible responses and conflicts would be set in motion. Only applied intelligence, diplomacy, and international institutions with enough spine to resist every whim of the United States can prevent the world from tumbling headlong into an abyss. But if Hussein holds the UN in contempt, he can hardly expect the gorillas of neocon America to be restrained by that same institution.

ANSWERS TO TWO GREAT MYSTERIES

ANSWERS TO TWO GREAT MYSTERIES

John Chuckman

On Friday, February 14, the Foreign Minister of France, M. de Villepin, gave a remarkable speech to the U.N. Security Council. The precision and force of reason with which he put France’s case concerning Iraq were nothing less than astonishing.

Not long after M. de Villepin’s speech, perhaps hoping to catch a hint of George Bush’s ferocious anger over developments at the U.N., CBC Radio broadcast the first part of the President’s words at the opening of a new FBI facility. They proved standard, post 9/11 us-and-them boiler-plate with no reference to developments at the U.N., but even in this workaday task, the President conveyed the annoying simplicity of his thinking and managed yet again to use the wrong word at least once.

Who can stand listening to this man? America is such a vast country and despite its waddling platoons in suspenders stretched sideways like buckling bridge supports and its huge clutches of blinking mascara under chicken-head hair-dos, it still has a remarkable number of decent people and educated, critical minds. How is it possible for them to listen to this man who couldn’t earn a living demonstrating vacuum-cleaners in Wal-Mart?

It is not just that Bush mumbles and slurs words and speaks with the irritating cadence of a store-front preacher looking to the collection plate for his next square meal. It’s not just that he makes insultingly-broad claims that leave no room for investigation, doubt, or negotiation. It’s not just that he regularly uses the wrong words, making many of his speeches resemble parodies or Monty Python skits.

It’s the utter nothingness of his thought, the slap-in-the-face, stinging quality of a greatly-privileged person who has nothing to say but lacks the grace to avoid saying it. Listening to him suggests what it must have been like living under sixteenth-century princes whose word remained unquestioned despite crushing evidence of excessive inbreeding.

He should be an embarrassment to the people of the United States, but it is the voices of intelligence and reason like those of M. de Villepin or Mr. Blix that are vilified in the American press. The absurdly nasty, intellectually feeble Mr. Bush remains largely untouched.

How, too, does one explain the behavior of Britain’s Prime Minister towards this odd creature? Mr. Blair is well-educated, articulate, and, by all accounts, a fierce power broker inside his party. So why does he come off looking and sounding for all the world like Bush’s perfectly-deferential, live-in butler? I can’t help thinking of Anthony Hopkins serving a candlelight dinner to Doctor Frankenstein’s creature, as it grunts and grimaces and occasionally has to be calmed to avoid ripping the seams of its suit while spasmodically waving its arms.

Yet Blair genuinely seems taken with this tongue-twisted, boring fundamentalist whose idea of a good time is throwing another cow on the barbeque.

But I think back to Mrs. Thatcher, one of the most formidable personalities on the world’s political stage during the second half of the Twentieth century, and her sickening fawning over Ronald Reagan, a charming man who liked jellybeans and shining cities on hills, and was good at selling Chesterfield cigarettes. Blair’s demeaning performance is not new.

And then I reflect on one of the strangest, most fascinating episodes of modern history, the British spies – the Cambridge circle of Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and Anthony Blunt, not to mention John Cairncross and the atomic spies Klaus Fuchs and Alan Nunn May – who during the 1940s and ’50s gave away all America’s atomic secrets and pretty well everything else they could lay their hands on. The damage was devastating to America’s ego and to relations with Britain. The full truth and full list of characters are not known to this day, but even in Mrs. Thatcher time, important bits, like Anthony Blunt’s role, still were being revealed.

I’m convinced Mr. Blair’s odd, servile behavior, and Mrs. Thatcher’s before him, can only be explained in light of the terrible anger and hostility of America’s establishment at these betrayals. The Atlantic Alliance was seriously damaged at a time when it meant something. Mr. Blair sees himself as doing heroic work in holding it together at a time when it means a great deal less.

Britain can never quite make up its mind about Europe. It wants to be part, but it wants to be a different kind of part, and with the disappearance of its empire after the war, it is only the connection with America that makes it a different kind of part. Mr. Blair seems intent on holding on to this, even though geography and economics argue for Britain’s becoming a fully-integrated part of Europe.

As for the first great mystery, the answer to that came in an e-mail from a friend in Maine. In response to one of my cartoons sent round, she wrote that she was planning to take her kids to Disney World and she prayed there would be no terrorist alerts. The point of the cartoon had been missed entirely. It was a striking graphic, almost iconic, and it concerned America’s rush to kill people in Iraq. But she missed that, equating her concern over a possible terror alert at Disney World with the certain, incomparable destructive horror awaiting people in Baghdad.

Why are otherwise intelligent and decent Americans not repelled by George Bush? Because they are afraid as they have not been in a very long time, and fear itself is a form of madness. America’s mainstream media do nothing to put this fear into perspective – instead, they feed the frenzy with idiotic rumors and disparage those with something reasonable to say.

We have Mr. bin Laden, in part, to thank for that, but as Mr. Bush hurls himself into attacks and threats against half a dozen countries, he has still largely failed to get at the authors of America’s fear. Far more importantly, the deeper cause of America’s fear and bin Laden’s action is the long-term impact of some of the country’s destructive, indescribably selfish foreign policies, but Mr. Bush’s unblinking response is only to push even harder those same destructive policies.

BLACK HOLES

BLACK HOLES

John Chuckman

One of the great discoveries of the late 20th century was the existence of black holes.

Their existence was implied by Albert Einstein’s relativity theory, and their necessary characteristics were worked out by Stephen Hawking and others. Eventually, a new generation of powerful visible-light telescopes and x-ray observatories gave us direct observations supporting what had only been theory.

As every kid fascinated by science knows, black holes come from stars that collapse as their fusion engines sputter out of fuel. The resulting, unimaginably-dense bits of mass have the remarkable ability to grow by capturing matter and energy entering their space-bending gravitational fields.

Modern Israel started as a bright star of an idea, a place of refuge for a horribly abused people, but many observers today might agree that the bright star appears to be collapsing into a dark mass bending the geopolitical space of the entire planet.

The world waits for Mr. Bush to launch a terrible war against Iraq. The only purpose for this war is a preemptive strike at Israel’s most tireless opponent. But the honesty of national debate in America is so distorted by massive gravitational tides, even many of the war’s opponents do not understand what it is they are opposing.

No meaningful evidence has been offered for Mr. Bush’s shrill assertions. An argument for protecting intelligence sources might be accepted as reason for not releasing details to the general public, but what is ridiculous is that no evidence has been supplied to the leaders of major NATO allies. France and Germany would not require the “report” now being quickly cobbled together for Mr. Powell were the case otherwise.

Iraq has bothered no one for twelve years, so why the sudden rush to war before weapons inspectors even complete their work? The only explanation appears to be so that the furious, temporary momentum of American public opinion generated by 9/11 can be harnessed for a war that would not be supported otherwise.

Never mind the deliberately-misleading, invented term weapons of mass destruction, there is no evidence that Iraq has strategically-significant weapons. There is virtual certainty that Iraq has no fissile materials for nuclear weapons, and we know from the previous chief weapons inspector that Iraq’s costly facilities for manufacturing fissile materials were destroyed.

There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any past dealings with al Qaeda. Indeed, it is known there was considerable animus between Hussein and bin Laden.

The notion that secret national weapons programs, if any have been reconstituted since weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, can be successful when teams of well-equipped inspectors, kept informed by intelligence agencies, roam over the Iraqi countryside, free at any time to enter any facility, truly is delusional. And delusional notions are a mighty dangerous basis for going to war.

To reassure Israel, all reasonable parties are willing to see a strict inspection regime maintained in Iraq, but this is not enough for the single-minded American President who insists on going to war and inflicting more horror on Iraqi civilians. And it is certainly not enough for Mr. Sharon who cheers Mr. Bush on and proclaims maniacally that Iran should be attacked next.

How easily people forget, or perhaps they do not care, that modern war means killing civilians in large numbers. The proportion of civilians killed to military personnel killed has grown exponentially since World War I. America’s focus on overwhelming air power and its reluctance to accept any casualties of its own only makes the trend worse. The question of going to war now is one in which Americans take little account of death, for the deaths are almost all on the other side and remain unseen by a comfortable public thinking itself informed by its heavily-biased press.

General Schwarzkopf’s well-staged press briefings with highly-edited film clips during Desert Storm left the impression that precision munitions have turned war into a neat, almost bloodless computer game. The truth is that about 95% of the munitions used in Desert Storm were not precision. Precision munitions are extremely costly, they slow operations down, and they can themselves go wrong, so they are reserved for special applications. Good old-fashioned dumb bombs and artillery are the only thing to use when you want to do a lot of killing in a hurry. Something like a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians were killed by American munitions that were not precision.

As we wait for this war, we feel the world’s economy buckling and yielding to the threats and uncertainty of a vast, destructive enterprise, to the promise of inflation and dislocation that always accompany war, and to unavoidable, crazed gyrations in the price of oil.

As we wait for this war, the President addresses an uneasy world in the cadences of a fundamentalist tent-preacher thumping his pulpit and threatening hell’s fire, offering the five and three-quarters billion people who live outside America but are still affected by its arbitrary decisions, such reassuring observations as, “The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.”

This President compounds economic uncertainty by running huge deficits and offering to keep preoccupied Americans happy with huge tax cuts – a bizarre, economically illiterate version of, “You can have it all and have it all now!”

As we wait for this war, Israel reduces the West Bank to an utterly bleak and hopeless landscape. All past commitments, as those of the Oslo Accord, are ignored. All the many past resolutions of the United Nations imposing obligations on Israel remain ignored, even while the U.S. asserts Iraq must be attacked precisely for ignoring other United Nations’ resolutions. The leader of the Palestinians is degradingly treated as a criminal virtually under a form of house arrest with whom no discussion can possibly be held.

No more worthy foes of injustice and hatred breathe than Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. They have made unmistakably clear what they see in the West Bank – a repeat in virtually every detail of South Africa’s hateful apartheid regime, but the collapsing star’s force field sucks in even the sympathetic emotions these observations should elicit from Americans.

As we wait for this war, Israel has approached the United States for another $10 billion or more in assistance, over and above the $3 billion it receives automatically each year (and, by rights, we should add the $2 billion paid annually to keep Egypt quiescent). This money is deemed necessary because Israel is run on a war-footing seemingly in perpetuity.

Israel behaves as a regional geopolitical-miniature replica of the United States, even to the extent of now building a triad of nuclear forces (land-based missiles, bombers, and submarine-based missiles – all nuclear-capable) – this in a country whose population is about the size of Ecuador’s, about one-tenth of one percent of the world’s people. The costly wastefulness of this is almost beyond description.

Bush’s War on Terror, rather than being a clearly-focused campaign against those actually responsible for 9/11, has become the label on a portfolio of grudges against all those in the world who balk at or oppose American foreign policy. The War on Terror is itself an emerging black hole sucking in resources, energy, and principles.

It’s not as though a good deal of the world does not understand what is happening. Voices of reason are heard from France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Egypt, South Africa, Russia, China, and other lands, but Bush announces he is willing “to go it alone” if necessary, meaning the entire planet, willy-nilly, must be dragged into a great vortex of destruction.

THE CASE FOR WAR

THE CASE FOR WAR

John Chuckman

Well, the evidence just keeps accumulating. I think it is a remarkable testimonial to President Bush’s restraint that he has waited this long.

After reading Tony Blair’s dossier on torture in Iraq, the impulse to launch everything the Pentagon has must have been almost irresistible.

Imagine, torture taking place in a brutal dictatorship? Good Lord, this comes as a shocking revelation.

But perhaps the President was reminded of tens of thousands tortured by America’s friends, or by Americans themselves, in Iran or Chile or Nicaragua or El Salvador or Vietnam when he paused, thinking a less-than-perfect case had been made for sending millions of pounds of high explosives and depleted uranium raining down on the people of Iraq.

Perhaps he was reminded of the way that beacon of democracy and human rights in the Middle East, Israel, has quietly tortured its captives for half a century, and, in more than a few cases, outright murdered batches of them.

Or he may have recalled reports from Amnesty International about the common brutality of American law enforcement. A prominent lawyer’s disgusting campaign to establish formal procedures for torture in America may just have slowed his hand. Or it may have been thoughts of the abysmal treatment of Afghan prisoners kept chained in Cuban cages, not to speak of the way his brutish allies in Afghanistan were encouraged publicly by the Secretary of Defense to murder prisoners en masse.

But I doubt it. Bush is simply not a wimp where other peoples’ lives are concerned. He seems capable of sustaining his equilibrium – with its quirky mix of being on a mission for God and nasty frat-boy sense of humor – even in the face of great adversity, so long as it is someone else’s adversity.

I’m sure his hand again started for the red phone when he heard recent, damning reports on the evils of Islam, coming as they did from such towering figures as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jimmy Swaggart. An outsider might be forgiven for regarding the good gentlemen’s remarks as something akin to theology lessons from the shriveled lips of retired Imperial Wizards of the Klu Klux Klan.

But the words of these men carry weight in several important Bush constituencies including Beany Baby collectors, survivalists living in abandoned Air Force missile silos stocked with tons of ammo and freeze-dried rations, and folks who take their annual vacations watching cartoons and shopping channels on satellite TV from recreational vehicles parked next to the cinder-block splendor of a Wal-Mart.

Jimmy Swaggart, for example, shares the President’s character-building experience as recovered reprobate, having had his rather arcane sexual practices with a prostitute exposed in magazines some years ago. It was the kind of publicity that hits the collection plate mighty hard. But old Jimmy’s a fighter. Equipped as he is with tear ducts capable of gushing on command and an amazing rubbery face that mimics any known expression of mock piety, once again he made the revival-tent crowds roar for more.

Jimmy came back to collect again, just as the President came back from his former, well-publicized life of rude, drunken abuse and failure to do anything worthwhile – although some might argue he succeeded only in removing the word drunken from the description. Still, in the President’s circle, people with such character credentials are regarded as authorities when it comes to recognizing evil.

And now, an amazing piece of evidence comes to light. We have a previously-obscure reporter who knows someone at the FBI whose second-cousin on his mother’s side made an important discovery. A few years back, in the course of taking rolls of souvenir snapshots of the smoldering ruins at Oklahoma City, the second-cousin happened to spot a couple of shady characters with moustaches.

She knew instinctively they were shady, because they didn’t take one souvenir snapshot of the smoking destruction streaked with blood. They just stood there talking and looking. Is that the way a real American acts? Besides these guys just didn’t look like real Americans.

Well, just to be sure, she snapped a picture of them, and, for a while, she kept it pinned to the big, pink, stuffed satin, heart-shaped bulletin board over her bed, right next to her autographed picture of Lt. Calley smiling in front of a burned-out hut in Vietnam. But eventually, word got around the trailer park, and, sure enough, her cousin from the FBI stopped by one day to ask for the picture.

Everyone at the Bureau was convinced immediately that the men in the snapshot were Iraqi agents – after all, the key to future promotion in the Bureau today is one’s ability to recognize such things – and they’ve leaked their views to the press, just as they did in their memorable struggles against Richard Jewel and Wen Ho Lee. Well, almost, but this time the New York Times or the Atlanta Constitution weren’t quite so interested, so the FBI had to dig up an obscure reporter who needed a break in life to become somebody. When they found a struggling, former reporter for her high-school yearbook at a faith-healing in Altoona, Illinois, they knew immediately they had the right person for the job of getting the story out.

This happy discovery also means America’s own son, Tim McVeigh, only did what he did under the insidious, all-reaching influence of Iraqi agents, an innocent lamb led astray by agents of the Antichrist who now strides the earth posing as the second Hitler – although there appears to be a modest disagreement in Bush circles on this exact description of Saddam since good old ‘Rev’ Falwell earlier proclaimed that the Antichrist was in fact Jewish.

The President is convinced he has the goods on Saddam. Now, he just sits back to wait for a formal casus belli. He knows Saddam will leave out a semicolon or mix a metaphor or give a pronoun an ambiguous antecedent somewhere in his thirty-thousand-page document describing Iraq’s weapons’ programs. After all, you can’t expect a bunch of damn Arab peasants to get such things right. And when the President’s team of shrieking, fanatical advisors finds the error, it will prove to the world that Saddam still tries to hide the truth the President has always understood.