Just before falling asleep, my prayerful emotion gave way to memories of the delicious vanilla-cream cookies that had begun my day, and I thought that it would be a good idea to have a plate of those cookies, and a glass of milk—properly chilled—placed by my bedside from time to time.
16
It’s a Wonderful War
No President asks for war. It is always a last resort. Or not a first choice, anyway. Let me put it this way: It depends on the alphabetical order of the choices.
And while a President may not ask for war, he may dream of war. And they are wonderful dreams. They are dreams in which rose-colored fields of flowered Iraqi grass sway in the evening breeze. Soldiers prance through green meadows, smiling, holding hands in the sunshine.
In this glorious dream, the Commander in Chief appears in the distance like a thousand-story building, he is a ghostly apparition on the horizon behind the troops, out of range of the gunfire. He is wearing his flight suit, holding his helmet at his side, urging on our fighting men and women in their sacred mission with great and inspiring words. Words such as “freedom,” “victory,” and “bring ’em on.”
Soon the soldiers are holding hands with the Iraqi people, who skip happily beside them, gazing with shock, awe, and respect at their liberators. They have received the blessings of freedom, for which they are grateful, and in awe. And shocked.
Beautiful songbirds also chirp in this dream.
Soon the whole world is holding hands and skipping through the happy-fields and enjoying not only the fruits of democracy, but also a bounty of hot dogs—as many as they can eat. Jesus rules benevolently over all the people, looking down lovingly from the heavens. All bask in His unconditional love. Except for terrorists, who are locked away deep in a prison under the world, where no one will ever find them, and where their private parts are electrocuted hourly for all eternity.
Clearly, this is a positive vision for Iraq and the world.
Therefore it came as some surprise to me when I outlined this plan in detail to my military commanders in the spring of 2003, and some of them argued that it was “unrealistic,” and “pie in the sky.”
“Pie is good,” I replied. “Pie is delicious.”
My Joint Chiefs of Staff and other advisors explained to me that in order to launch this war, we had to have what in military lingo is known as a “reason.”
There were many good reasons to go to war with Iraq. The first one I proposed was that I was the Commander in Chief, and I was ordering it.
When I was told this would not be a good enough reason, more ideas were generated.
One excellent reason, for the moment, was to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which we had sold to him in the 1980s. I believed strongly that the evil dictator had those weapons, because my Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, still had carbon copies of the receipts.
But since the weapons have yet to be found, it is reasonable to assume that the dictator used the art of Iraqi black voodoo to make them disappear.
Another superb reason we thought of was to bring liberty to the people of Iraq. This was a people who above all others on Earth deserved to have the full resources of the United States mobilized to save them from tyranny.
But there was one reason many on my staff believed to be more important than all of the above: Someone had to pay for the attack on our country on September the 11th.
I did not know where the perpetrator, Osama Bin Laden, was hiding at that time. I knew intuitively that he was in a hole, but that was all the information I had. With such vague intelligence, it was not practical for my commanders to formulate a plan to dislodge him from this unknown hole. So, in lieu of him, we settled on someone else: Saddam Hussein.
Let there be no misunderstanding—I did not take any chances selecting someone who may have had nothing to do with a terrorist attack against our country. To be on the safe side, I verified Saddam Hussein’s ties to Al-Qaeda with my Jesus-stone. This is a magical amulet that I keep under my desk. I take it out of its velvet sackcloth and hold it aloft only when faced with the most vital decisions facing our country. It seemed to warm in my hands when I passed it over Iraq on my Oval Office map.
White House defense-strategy memo, March 19, 2003
In the face of this compelling evidence, America’s mission was clear.
But try as we might, during the first few months of the war, we could not find Saddam Hussein. We put out a reward for his capture. Then we began to get tips that he had fled underground. Into a hole. We then armed our fighting forces with shovels and pickaxes to dig in likely spots across Iraq.
Take back everything I said before about it not being worth finding Osama Bin Laden in a hole. This time, plans were drawn up to dig as many holes as it took to find this substitute culprit of the September 11 attacks.
Eventually, after many months of diligent searching, we succeeded. We found Saddam Hussein in a hole in Iraq. He was not properly groomed, and he smelled of mold.
This is what burrowing does to a man. It makes him like a worm. He loses the ability to see in direct sunlight. He grows little feelers on his lip, which appear to the naked eye to be normal human whiskers. But they are not. They are a mucous membrane not unlike those of the mole, which uses these feelers to sense his way through his labyrinth of tunnels. He burrows down deeper and reproduces with other burrowing vermin. He finds a secluded warren in which to secrete his young, and quickly spawns a race of mutant mole-people.
This is why it was especially important to capture Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion, before he and his army of mole-men could burrow their way to America and attack our homeland from underneath.
The day Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces was one of the greatest moments in the war effort, except perhaps for Mission Accomplished Day. I had promised that the terrorists would be smoked out of their holes, and on that day, this sacred pledge was honored. I cannot say with any certainty whether smoke was used to expel him from that location. But make no mistake: We found him hiding in a dirt hole. And soon he would face justice for being the leader of Iraq.
But let us back up and start the story of the war from its noble beginnings.
Being President is a tremendous honor. There is always somebody there waiting on you. And there is a great deal of free stuff that they give you. They will give you anything you want to eat. A hot dog any time of day! Everything has got the presidential seal on it, too: towels, coasters, the little paper covering on the drinking glasses. Everything. But being President is also an awesome responsibility. And one of those responsibilities is the ability to launch missiles and blow up a whole country.
When it was my turn to blow up a whole country, I took the responsibility very seriously.
In the early morning hours of a particular date in 2003, I believe it was, I gave the order to begin the attack.
In the hours leading up to the attack, much effort was expended in careful consideration and brainstorming by my top military advisors to come up with a name for the war. It is now well known that the name we settled on was “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
But it was not my first choice.
Other choices included “Showdown in the Gulf.” At the time it was proposed, we did not know that CNN had already taken it. And there was “Shakedown in the Sand,” which I believe the World Wrestling Federation later used when they entertained the troops during their USO tour.
White House memo, October 15, 2002
Weeks later, after the decision had been made, the name of the war no longer mattered. What mattered was that my staff was assembled, and it was time to start a war. I looked up at them and said solemnly, “It is time to attack Iraq.”
As I said it, I realized “Attack Iraq” was the perfect name for this war, because it rhymed. But I had thought of it too late. This was the eleventh hour. All of the government folders with the label “Operation Iraqi Freedom” had already been printed up.
This was to b
e the first casualty of the war. A reality of wartime that every combatant must face is that there is real loss. The loss of a good name for the war is a setback I did not foresee. But there was no time to mourn. I forged ahead with the bombing campaign.
It was a glorious beginning to freedom in that first 24 hours. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iraqi people were killed. And it looked very good on TV, one must admit. It looked just like the 4th of July. Bombs went off, lighting up the night sky with brilliant colors.
If only we could have heard the screams of the dying. Actually, the screams were probably drowned out by the sound of the bombs. That may have been for the best, as the top commanders do not necessarily need to concern themselves with the details.
Our troops behaved bravely in Operation Iraqi Freedom. But of course there are always a few bad apples who violate the rules of war. This happened in the prison “Abu Graheebref.”
America does not torture. Therefore, military justice was handed down swiftly against these wrongful torturers. We started at the bottom and worked up the chain of command, all the way to the top. The highest-ranking official involved in the promotion of torture was Private First Class Lynndie England. A court of military justice found that she was solely responsible for the shameful abuse of these prisoners. She was found guilty and is currently serving her prison sentence.
As President, it is my job to say where the “buck stops” in these matters, and I declared decisively in this instance that it stopped with Private First Class Lynndie England.
Some critics point to these bad apples and suggest that they are a reflection of all of our brave fighting men and women. I wish to quickly remind such negative-sayers that my glorious vision for Iraq came from Jesus himself. Are these critics prepared to go on record criticizing the policies of our Lord? I do not think so.
But now is not the time for blaming, blaspheming, or pointing out who failed at what, and which intelligence was false or not. Now is a time to recount the proud history of a President.
One of the most dangerous operations of the war took place late in November, a year or two ago. A plane carrying a very important passenger crept towards Baghdad in the dark of night, protecting this special cargo from terrorists or insurgent attack. The plane landed near the base, and out stepped the President of the United States.
I was quickly ushered into the mess hall, where I served a turkey dinner for the grateful troops, and then bid farewell to the newly liberated and peaceful Iraq, hightailing it out of there to avoid getting killed in the crossfire.
When you bring freedom to a people, sometimes they are so excited to be free that they shoot off rockets and other celebratory explosions to express their great joy of being free.
Note from George H. W. Bush to Saddam Hussien, March 19, 2003
But perhaps the most historic moment of the Iraq war took place on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was gleaming in the midday sun on a quiet day in May of 2003.
At a specified moment, an F-18 fighter jet streamed in from the west, blotting out the sun for a split second and causing all eyes on deck to look up in unison. Little did they know that it was a President of a certain United State who was in the passenger seat, being flown there, dressed as though he was the pilot himself.
When they told me I would be flying jets in the National Guard way back in my youth, no one could have guessed the momentous impact it would have. For the culminating moment of my service would happen on this fateful day nearly 30 years later.
It was the most important mission in the war. The final mission. The fighter touched down expertly on the battleship’s landing strip, and out came a determined leader, to announce to a thankful nation that the war was over and we had been victorious.
The whole world watched in awe that day, as they realized yet again that America had saved the Middle East from chaos.
This was a great moment for our country, and would be the fulfillment of my destiny.
I would like to dedicate this chapter to the brave and resilient people of Iraq, who we had no choice but to attack. They endured our military assault, graciously allowed us to fight the terrorists in their homeland over there so we would not have to fight them over here in ours, and then they rose out of the rubble to take on the challenge of becoming our newest insurgent enemy in the War on Terror.
May God bless them, and bring us swift victory in the fight against them.
17
2004: Another Mandate
After I had been in office for a few years, with “Mission Accomplished” under my belt, America’s standing in the world at an unprecedented new level, and my successful signing of the Exxon CEO Protection Act, I learned that yet another challenge lay ahead. My advisors informed me that in order to serve the full eight years allotted me by law, I must be “re”elected.
I began to ponder the purpose of such an undertaking.
What would it serve our country to ask a celebrated War President to jump through this additional hoop? I had been elected once already.
The American people knew that I had stood firm against Evil. They trusted me to put the faith back in science, to keep immigrants from immigranting, and to bring common sense to the debate about whether we should protect the environment. Most importantly, 9-11 had happened on my watch. By any measure, that should count for something.
But as it turns out, my advisors held firm on this “reelection” idea. Therefore, for the second time in four years, I hit the campaign trail.
This time would be different than the last. This time, I had the advantage of what they call “the incumbency”: three years of presidenting experience. There was no doubt in my mind that I would win in a landslide. My broader mission to transform our democratatorship was not yet complete, and God knew that.
However, I had not foreseen the lengths to which the Democratic Party, hiding behind the scenes, would go to compete in the race. First, they would put up a candidate to oppose me. Laws had been put in place, I believed, which made such actions illegal. But oppose me they did, even in the face of possible internment at the Guantanamo Bay holding facility.
Next, they would attempt to evade the central issue of this campaign: the raw terror we faced on 9-11.
My staff believed the deep, emotional fear that the terrorists unleashed on September the 11th, the kind of fear that makes a person revert to a primal state in which he cannot use his higher brain functions, was the only issue that the American people were concerned about in this election. They knew the voters were not concerned about “foreign policy,” “sound analysis,” or “solutions.” They simply wanted to be told, again and again, of the terrible, terrifying terror.
Finally, the Democrats boldly attempted to find a candidate who they felt had the best chance of winning.
But they could not find one.
Many opponents emerged from their opponenty enclaves. There was a funny black man. A screaming man. A very old man. And a very small man who appeared to be a troll of some kind. They were all eliminated by infighting, and by the good laws on the books that keep such people out of public office.
After these initial failures, they did not give up their fight. They turned to dark forces, and created a candidate using perverted science. John Kerry was what they called it. It was a monstrosity put together in a madman’s secret laboratory, a combination of the living matter of many different candidates. He had the tall, lanky torso of Abe Lincoln, and the brain of my previous opponent, Al Gore. He also had Michael Dukakis’s hair, Walter Mondale’s charm, and the strong lower jaw of Herman Munster, the great Democratic President of the 1960s.
John Kerry was a scary man, and a scary opponent. His massive block head stared down as he lurched at you, as if reaching for your throat. His face was frozen in a grim scowl, the frightful result of the forbidden experiments of his face-builders. This made him incapable of smiling or showing emotion of any kind, which bespoke the soulless void inside, and its disdain for all humanity.
> It was also rumored that some of the body parts used to cobble together this unholy candidate had come from the battlefields of another country from times long past, in the Far East. His expert combiners promoted this fact as if it were a positive attribute. They staged a grand convention in which the monster stood in front of an American flag, and summoned several men who his mad scientist creator had found near-dead on a swift boat. These men proudly took credit for offering an arm or a foot to this abomination so that it might be stitched together against all the laws of God and man.
John Kerry wailed and howled to the domed roof of the convention stadium. His forlorn, walrus-like cries echoed through the expansive hall. The onlookers twisted their faces in a combination of sympathy and disgust, frightened by the cursed freak, yet unable to look away.
When the balloons fell, no one clapped. Instead, all cowered in fear of the monster’s wrath.
Many watching the convention on television were swayed by the man-thing’s horrid cries. His loud pained sounds stoked a new fear in the voters: the fear that this rampaging monster, once elected, might crush the skulls of their loved ones. This new threat distracted the citizens from the real issue: the raw terror of 9-11. I do not put much stock in polls, but even I was concerned when this so-called “fear gap” began to close.
So I redoubled my campaign efforts. I traveled the country and communicated directly with the American voters.
But this was not as easy as one might think. Not in a world changed forever by the terrible events of 9-11. In speaking to crowds of voters, I faced the real danger that the Enemies of Freedom might infiltrate the audience at one of my stump speeches and attack me with harmful questions.
These enemies had to be stopped.
First, before anyone was admitted into one of my speeches, my staff ran a complete criminal background check and a thorough review of any library books the presumed enemy combatant may have checked out in the last 12 years. Then, using advanced National Security Administration surveillance technology, we analyzed the subject’s TV-viewing habits, telephone conversations, and e-mail correspondence. The next step was a DNA check to ascertain U.S.-based parentage, a skin sample for racial analysis, and finally a signed and fingerprinted loyalty oath to ensure lifelong allegiance to the Republican Party and the Bush family.
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