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US-Iraq War
The
Monkey Goes Where the Wind Blows
Bush says firing Rumsfeld over Iraqi Prisoner Abuse not an Option by Dave Tomar (week of 5/10/04) This week, the Bush administration continued its efforts to quell the flames of controversy over alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison, taking an official stance of idle regret. As anger continues to fester amongst the public and Congressional lawmakers alike, the president offered a rare apology to the Iraqi and American people during a Tuesday press conference. He explained that "those photographs were a disgrace and a stain on the American military which has performed so honorably in its annihilation and detention of Iraqis to this point. The White House condemns those photographs. For one thing, the lighting was all wrong. When I look at a freshly beaten, stripped naked Iraqi, I want to be able to see his butthole puckered with fear. These pictures are too blurry. For that, I am sorry." He conceded that "the American public has come to expect a certain degree of humanity, decency and restraint from this administration. These photographs fall pretty much into line with the degree of which I speak. But we never intended to get caught treating people this way. Normally, we would treat people like this behind closed doors and we’d give it a name like Operation Caress Iraqis Gently With Loving Kindness or Operation Don’t Molest Iraqi War Prisoners. Of course, the pictures make that pretty difficult. So instead, I can only say how deeply troubling I find it, and how truly sorry I am, that most of the Iraqi prisoners depicted in those horrific photographs still had all of their limbs intact and weren’t burnt beyond human recognition. This is not how we do things in Iraq." He went further to address the possibility that this crisis may have damaged the credibility of U.S. intentions in Iraq, explaining that "credibility was never an issue. If we were worried about credibility in the first place, I’d be a shoeshine boy in a Crawford, Texas subway station instead of the president of the United States. Ok. I admit that it looks pretty bad. All the torturing and humiliation makes us look exactly like the evil Saddam Hussein. But that’s just not true. We’re nothing like him. When Hussein was in charge, they had stuff like electricity and sewage disposal. But seriously, it’s important that the Iraqis understand how much better off they are now, under our supervision. And we’ll rape and beat as many of them as we have to to get that point across." The president also addressed the matter of responsibility in this snafu, disclosing in no uncertain terms that he had verbally reprimanded Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld over the incident. He explained that "I called Don into my office and I told him I was displeased that I hadn’t been informed of these incidences earlier. If he had told me about them in advance that my head would be in a noose over this, I would have been better prepared to make up some sort of cock-and-bull story about how these photos were propaganda forged by the sophisticated syndicates of Osama bin Laden’s Al Queda network in cahoots with the Kerry campaign and Jane Fonda. Unfortunately, I never had that opportunity. So I told Rumsfeld I was mad. He lunged at me and tried to eat my neck. I curled up into a ball on the floor and pretended to sob uncontrollably until he left the room in disgust. All in all, I think we had a good talk and I consider the matter completely resolved. From now on, it’s official. No more torturing, sodomizing or pornographizing Iraqi prisoners. But we still get to piss on them. I mean, after it all . . . September 11th. It’s only fair." Beyond that, however, the president affirmed his faith in Secretary Rumsfeld, asserting that "Donald is a good Secretary of Defense. He’s led us through two wars and we successfully managed to pretend we won both of them without actually accomplishing anything remotely resembling progress in either. That’s pretty good. Besides, there’s a rumor going around the halls of the White House that if we fire Donald Rumsfeld, it will greatly displease Satan. And as you well know, Satan’s support, both financially and diplomatically, is of great importance in this time of crisis. I would hate to jeopardize that. The last thing we need is for Satan to unleash a rain of furious hellfire and black damnation on the world. I would hate for our apocalypse to have to compete with his." In spite of Bush’s support for his Secretary of Defense, Congressional leaders on both sides are calling for heads and Rumsfeld’s is the top order. This week, the Senate passed a unanimous condemnation of the alleged abuses. Though it was mostly a symbolic gesture, it increased pressure on the president to take some meaningful action on the matter. Donald Rumsfeld spoke on his own behalf this week, assessing that "I had a good run. If this is the end of my career, I take comfort in knowing that wherever I go, whatever I do, I’ll always be in a position to kill lots of people. And even if I’m not, I have gotten the opportunity to kill a lot of people to date. That’s important. A man has to make his mark on the world. Anyway, about the abuses, on one hand, they are terrible. They don’t reflect well on our great military and they don’t reflect well on the United States. But on the other hand, I really don’t care a whole lot. It’s not as though it’s a revelation that we do terrible things to Iraqis while we’re keeping them as prisoners in their own country. It’s actually pretty consistent with the way we’ve handled this war to begin with. The point is, if it were up to me, those photographs would be sold in the Adult Erotic Entertainment section of the bookstore." So this week, as more photographs are surfacing, and violence in Iraq continues to escalate, the Bush administration is struggling to find a solution. Though the officers who are alleged to be guilty of these abuses are scheduled for court martial, there are the difficult issues of systemic liability to consider. The prison guards have claimed, for their defense, that these abuses were militarily encouraged methods of preparation for interrogation. Secretary Rumsfeld has asserted that "we do not encourage these methods of detainment. We just give loaded automatic weapons to a bunch of psychosexually disturbed, brain-dead, corn-pokin’ hicks and assume that they’ll have the initiative to employ these methods of detainment. Frankly, I think you should be impressed that these Mongoloid retards even know how to open a camera shudder. " While President Bush expressed more vocal remorse about the abuses, he was also careful to remind Americans that "this is not my fault at all. When I decided that we needed to make up a bunch of bullshit about why we should conquer this country so we could dismantle its central government, reduce its infrastructure to smoldering rubble and steal its greatest economic resource, I did it with the best of intentions. I never imagined that bad things would happen to the Iraqi people. If there was some way I could make it up to the Iraqis, I would. But I’m very slow-witted so I can’t come up with any ideas. So I guess the best thing to do is to continue my occupation and hostile economic takeover. It may be inhumane and against the best interests of the United States, Iraq and the world at large, but at least you can’t figure all that out just by looking at a photograph." And remember, as always, the monkey goes where the wind blows. About the Author(s): This column is a parody of current political events. See under Our Contributors to find out about the Author(s) of this article. |
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