An Iraqi Fable -- or Wishful Thinking
After Saddam (AS) 1 Week
The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain and his cabinet
were nowhere to found in Baghdad after the victorious U.S. and British
Allied Armies were welcomed by cheering citizens grateful for the near
100% smartness of the missiles used to rout Saddam's forces. There were
so few civilian casualties that the anit-war skeptics who were so vocal
in their opposition to this cleansing act were all suddenly afflicted by
a mysterious laryngitis. Said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
(Gen, ret'd), "We
owe this near miracle of modern warfare technology to spectacular advances
in Artificial Intelligence that I can now reveal is the real reason why
Prime Minister Howard of Australia was in on our act from the beginning.
For years, U.S. scientists have labored long and hard to increase the
smartness of our missiles to no avail. Along comes Mr Howard who offered
us Australian technology so long under-rated by the rest of the world.
While for security reasons I cannot reveal which of their scientists are
responsible for this breakthrough, I am permitted to drop a few hints.
Evidently it was developed by a team in a university which stumbled upon
the key ideas in their work, in of all things, teaching doggie robots
to play soccer. Such is serendipity. But the real beneficiaries are
the people of Iraq, who have been rid of a cruel tyrant at almost no
loss of civilian lives."
AS 3 Weeks
The Allied Forces establish its HQ in the presidential
palace that was once the precincts of Saddam's family. In the basement
they find grisly reminders of tortured victims. Several colonels of the
elite Iraqi commando units are reported to be negotiating with leaders
of the once persecuted Iraqi resistance to form an interim government
under the auspices of the Allied Armies. The U.S. and E.U., including
the now chastened French and German governments, announce a massive
Marshall-Plan stle aid package for the rehabilitation of Iraq worth
U.S. 5 billion
in the first year. In addition, there is afoot intense U.S. pressure
on Israel to begin serious discussion with its Palestinian neighbor on
a peace plan to end with a de-militarized Palestinian state without
any Israeli settlements on currently illegally occupied Palestinian
territory. Prime Minister John Howard of Australia generously offers
displaced Israeli settlers a permanent home in the Christmas Island,
to be re-named anything they choose so as to not offend a people who
are still awaiting the genuine messiah.
AS 4 Weeks
PM Sharon of Israel and President Arafat of the PLO both
resign due to ill-health. The Guardian newspaper in England cynically
suggested that what this means is that their respective parties have
hinted that if they did not resign they will suffer ill-health.
Udday Hussain, gangster son of the once feared Saddam, is found
alive in Algiers learning a new trade as a bouncer in a brothel.
The provisional government of Iraq under acting President Karim Ishaq,
Colonel (ret'd), has announced to the astonishment of all skeptics that
his government, with the strong advice of the Allied Forces, will honor
all the oil contracts signed by the deposed Saddam regime. Ishaq said,
"My colleagues and I had of course assumed that the American and British
oil companies would want full access to our oil fields. But no, President
Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice-President Cheney insisted that nothing
was further from their minds!! They even hinted that all along they
really wanted to export real democracy, but used their apparent oil
connections as a facade to fool the dangerous capitalists who thought
that they (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney) were their instruments. Allah be
praised!!" Jacques Chiraq resigns in shame; Chancellor Schroeder gives
up the Chancellorship to his wife, apologizing to President Bush for his
mistrust of the American people. PM Tony Blair is offered the succession
to the British Throne by an adoring Queen, but declines in favor of his
wife Cherie instead. PM Howard is made Prime Minister for Life by a
chastened Australian electorate, many of whom had to be restrained from
tossing their children into Sydney Harbor in atonement for their sin of
having participated in anti-war marches just two months ago.
AS 2 Months
King Abdullah of Jordan announces Pan-Arabic talks to
consider the formation of a Middle-Eastern Common Market patterned
after the old European Common Market which eventually led to the present
European Union. The Saudi government persuades the Wahabi sect (which
hitherto determined the ultra-strict Islamic ethos in that country) to
form an International Islamic Council comprising international Islamic
scholars from as diverse origins as China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and
Britain with a view to broadening interpretation of scripture. Israel,
under its new coalition PM, begins talks with the new PLO President;
travel between Israel and Palestine are normalized. The Tokyo, London,
Frankfurt and New York stockmarkets zoom upwards by an unbelievable 25%
in the last two days, bring the total rise to an astonishing 50% since
Saddam went into exile in Libya in the last days of the Allied invasion --
now known by grateful Iraqis as the Allied Liberation.
AS 6 Months
The Middle-Eastern Common Market is officially launched with
George Soros as its honorary economic advisor. King Abdullah said,
"Soros was invited because of his visionary ideas on how to control
the abuses of the huge banks and hedge funds in currency speculation.
Moreover, he understands that untrammeled capitalism is actually signing
its own death warrant. That he is Jewish is immaterial, as the MECM
has in fact invited Israel to be a full member." Tel Aviv erupts into
a huge celebratory party; Jerusalem is stunned into sullen incredulity.
Orthodox Jews and the Hamas are exposed by the newly emboldened Syrian
Press to be in secret negotiations to sabotage the new economic order.
It quotes a Jewish spokesman as saying, "Such evil as peace cannot be
allowed to come to pass; it would be the end of the welfare payments we
get for reading religious books as a vocation". His counterpart in the
Hamas nodded in grave agreement, "We may be bitter enemies, Mordecai and
I, but this fighting, killing and hatred is all that we have lived for."
Syria and Israel jointly announce the neutering of their respective
extremist fringes by exiling them to Uruguay and Paraguay respectively.
AS 12 Months
The Iraqi Armed Forces begin to demobilize. Israel announces
a counter- demobilization. The Iraqis threaten to accelerate their
demobilization. President Ishaq is quoted by the visiting Malaysian Minister
of International Trade Rafidah Aziz as saying,"The Iraqi people will not
be out-demobilized by anyone, least of all the Israelis!" The PM of
Israel responds, "Colonel Ishaq is a paper tiger. Who does he think
he is? This is too much! My cabinet will not take this lying down,
and they authorized me to say that Israel will not only demobilize, but
will announce shortly a time-table to disarm. In fact I have just given
orders to destroy our nuclear weapon stockpile!" France and the U.S.
counsel caution. The French paper Le Monde publishes leaked position
papers from the manufacturers of the Mirage fighter-bombers aimed at
pressuring the French government to halt the voluntary disarmament of
Iraq by its provisional government. "Ishaq and his ex-Colonels are
a menace to the French economy", it said in part. Two days later the
Washington Post follows with even more devastating leaks from missile
producer Hughes Aircraft and stealth bomber manufacturer
Northrup Grumman. A chilling
passage said, "It is imperative that the CIA must undermine President
Ishaq's government in its bad example to the member countries of the
MECM, for if they all disarm the damage that will be done to the U.S
economy will be incalculable. We had all been banking on an escalation
of tension in that region, but of all the people who would betray us, how
could we imagine that the Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney Troika will be the ones?
Who could have imagined that they were so smart as to pretend to be the
stooges of our oil-company friends and ourselves - only to reveal their
true colors as frightening social democrats! So, another task for the CIA
is to also arrange for regime change right here in the U.S." Riots erupt
in the suburbs that host U.S. arms manufacturers. These spread to New
York, Detroit, San Francisco, and most major U.S cities. President Bush
calls out the National Guard in all states to restore and maintain order.
AS 24 Months
The International Islamic Council, the Vatican and
a committee of Senior Talmudic Scholars announce that intense but
independent research by all three parties after the liberation of Iraq
produced incontrovertible evidence that Allah, God and J*V*H are in
fact One and the Same Father. When asked about this, Iraqi President
Ishaq said quietly, "This is good. But Iraq is now a modern secular
state in which all religions can be freely practised. In fact, my own
son-in-law is a Hare Krishna." Osama bin Laden's colleagues release a
video of him committing Hara Kiri in a martyr's protest against Islam's
leaders consorting with the Infidels. Not to be outdone, Israeli Shas
MPs begin a protest fast unto death, but were force-fed by the Mossad.
Southern Baptists in the U.S. convert en masse in disgust to Hinduism,
the Rev Jerry Falwell saying on Evangelical TV, "If our One True God is
in fact Jewish and Mohammedan too, then what the fuck, we are taking
insurance against such disappointments in the future by adopting a faith
that has 330 million gods. That should cover all bases." 60 million
Baptist (now Hindu!) Americans watching that segment faint, not because
of the conversion, but because the censor had forgotten to *beep* out the
"f-word" which they never thought the Rev Falwell could even pronounce.
AS 26 Months
The provisional Iraqi government announces a date for
democratic elections to the new parliament, using the best model of
representative election in the world - the Australian preferential method.
It invites Nelson Mandela to be its first constitutional Monarch. Mandela
declines because he had already accepted the Vatican's invitation to be
its first Living Saint, a brilliant marketing idea to bring excitement
and relevance to the Catholic Church.
AS 30 Months
Karim Ishaq is elected President of Iraq in the first Arab
democratic election under compulsory and secret ballot. Australian
observers donated by PM for Life John Howard declare the election free
and fair. The Iraqi Social Democratic Party under Ishaq win 65% of the
vote and is swept into office. Ishaq appoints a repatriated Kurdish
Iraqi, Professor Bagwan Koreshi, as his Foreign Minister. Koreshi was
professor emeritus of philosophical linguistics in London and Paris.
The Baath Party, which once had a stranglehold in Iraq and Syria,
was virtually wiped out, with over 90% of its candidates losing their
deposits. The major opposition party with 1/3 of the seats in the new
parliament is led by a ophthalmologist who is a widowed mother of three.
Her late husband, a Berkeley- trained physicist who refused to work on
nuclear weapons, was one of Saddam Hussain's earliest torture victims.
AS 36 Months
Shock, Horror, Mayhem! President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld go missing. One week later they turn up
in a sleazy tavern in New Orleans, drunk, disheveled and disoriented.
Secret Service reports are suppressed. The next week a press conference
is called by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. When she appeared,
she was visibly shaken. Dr Rice began, "My fellow Americans, what I am
going to say to you will shock you, as indeed it shocked me. When the
Secret Service found President Bush, VP Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld in
New Orleans, its initial reaction was that they were the kidnap victims
of a nefarious and vindictive Al Qaeda remnant cell. The President
and his colleagues had brought such peace and stability to the world,
and gave the lie to those that thought Americans were hypocrites,
liars, murderers, etc. This took the wind out of the Al Qaeda, and
indeed that of all extremist groups anywhere. So it was natural to
assume that this was a revenge kidnap. My fellow Americans - if only
that were true!! It is my sad duty to now tell you what appears to be
almost unbelievable, but it is unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately -
the bizarre truth. When the Secret Service began debriefing President
Bush and his two friends, it discovered to its horror that these three
men had no recollection of what happened in the past three years!!
There was a BLANK in their memories for that period!! Desperate to
find out what happened, our top psychiatrists were consulted, and they
suggested hypnosis. Now, please brace yourselves. And excuse me while
I take a swig of my whisky here. Well, to cut a long story short, all
the rumors you have heard over the years about the Rothwell incidents
are true. There ARE flying saucers, and they have been abducting people.
My fellow Americans, with the information obtained under hypnosis we are
now reasonably confident that the Aliens - wherever they come from -
abducted President Bush, VP Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld just before
the decision to invade Iraq was taken. Then - here is the awful part -
they PROGRAMMED the three of them to behave in the uncharacteristic way
we have seen in the past 36 months. After these Aliens achieved what
they wanted, they erased the programs and released the three. Why the
sleazy New Orleans tavern, you might ask? Our psychiatrists conjecture
that after the second abduction for the de-programming, the three asked
for a drink and were dropped into the place which the Aliens thought
would be most congenial for their personalities." The Press Conference
broke up in chaos. The U.S. faces an unprecedented Constitutional
crisis as the Supreme Court could not pronounce off-hand the legality
of a government indirectly ruled by Aliens through a puppet President.
President Chavez and Chairman Castro offered assistance and advice to
their beloved northen neighbor, saying, "We Latin Americans have a
lot of experience being ruled by puppet presidents controlled by
a superior power".
Aftermath
Australian PM for Life Howard also disappeared. But sadly,
he did not re- appear. A few days later the skies of Sydney rained
hundreds of thousands of toy lap dogs with Howard's face and a strange
message inscribed on their bums - "The Star Gate Opened, and the Star
Gate Closed". The Australian electorate, frightened and confused by
the new world order, vote the Greens to government since neither the
Liberals nor Labor appear to have any ideas on how to cope with the
new world order. Prime Minister Bob Brown, Deputy PM Kerry Nettle,
Foreign Minister Lee Rhiannon and Treasurer Ian Cohen visit Indonesia
to repair the diplomatic damage done by the Howard regime over the past
6 years. Australia signs the Kyoto Accord and repeals the draconian
anti-refugee laws. Ex-Foreign Minister Downer becomes the principal
of a suburban kindergarten and passes his time happily playing with
teddy bears. Other Liberal and Labor politicians: Tony Abbott became
a Russian Orthodox monk, saying "My hero is Rasputin, so this is how
I will begin to emulate his career path". Peter Reith was last sighted
doing a dog-training deal over coffee in Rio with the deposed Kim Jong Il.
Ex-Liberal advisor and head-kicker Michael Kroger joined ex-Labor front
bencher Mark Latham to set up a Public Relations firm specializing in
etiquette.