Paris, France, Dec. 9. Objective Oriented Press Service, OOPS. The good news is, the war is almost over. As President Bush said, on an aircraft carrier, May 1, 2003 “Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of precision, speed, and boldness that the enemy did not expect.” Since then the war has been little more than a ‘mopping up operation.’
Now that the Iraq Study Group suggests we complete the mission by early 2008, just in time for the U.S. Presidential elections, and people all over the world are calling for Iran and Syria to get involved, some questions remain. Who won? And what can we expect to happen next? I spoke to Silas W. Coddington, noted pundit.
“Iraq and the United States are the real winners – we toppled Saddam, and destroyed whatever weapons of mass destruction Saddam had that we couldn’t find. Iran and Syria are also winners, and you can’t forget the Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian people. The real losers – the Russians, and the French.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How did the Russians and the French lose this war? They are not involved. And how, exactly, did we win?”
“Well,” he started to explain, “it’s complicated. It’s really complicated. And I’m not sure you can really understand. I understand it, but I have a PhD.”
“Try me.”
“It’s like this. Remember Rumsfeld saying ‘You go to war with the army you have,’” he asked.
“December 9, 2004 – hard to forget.”
“It’s like that. When it’s time to stop fighting, and it will be in 2008, before the elections, we just declare victory. ‘Peace with Honor’ is good, but Nixon used that for Viet Nam, so we need a new slogan.”
“But that’s so cynical. It sounds like you’re manipulating the war for political gain.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re not manipulating the war, and we certainly wouldn’t do it for political gain. That’s un-American. That’s something the Russians would do. Or the French. Or the Terrorists. But not us. We wear the white cowboy hats. That’s why they lost the war.”
“But,” I protested, “How could they lose the war? They aren’t fighting.”
“Listen,” he answered, “You’re getting bogged down in ‘facts.’ We don’t need facts. We’re not reality based. We have TV, and Radio and the Internets. All we have to do is tell the reporters what the facts are, who won, they will write up the stories, if they want we can write up the stories for them, they publish the story, and everyone will eventually know the truth – that we won, that the facts are what we decide they are. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment to discuss some stock options with a defense contractor.”
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This is a work of satire. Any resemblance to the facts is purely tragic.
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