This week, Army General John Abizaid, speaking from the strategically located Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, offered the first official assessment of the nature of the rising ‘insurgency’ in Iraq since the end of ‘major combat’ in May. He asserted that the size of the resisting force in Iraq was likely no greater in number than 5,000 individuals which, he concluded “means that we’re spending $87 billion this year to get our asses beat by a crowd the size of an Ohio State football riot.” A concurrent report, released by the independent military think-tank, Jacobson and Sons Research and Roofing, indicated that the group currently succeeding in its guerrilla war against the greatest fighting force in the world is also smaller in number than the following things: people employed by WalMart in Missouri this past year, movies that have unjustifiably inspired trilogies since 2000, people that have been laid off by WalMart in Missouri this past year, sperm in a single leaky thimble of semen, members of the International Preservation of Oprah Organization (IPOO) and people that have either been Bill Cosby’s children or played them on TV.
General Abizaid dismissed the report as irrelevant, though he did concede that “this is similar in nature to the three year, mid-nineties Malcolm Jamal Warner insurgency except that the personnel at the WB network was a lot better armed than the Iraqis.” Given the shocking low-balled estimate of the resistant force in Iraq, the Bush administration is under increasing pressure to deflect unflattering comparisons to such generally acknowledged disastrous miscalculations as the Malcolm Jamal Warner show and the Vietnam War. With 130,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq, buffeted by an additional 30,000 soldiers from sympathetic nations such as Britain, Italy and Australia, the Coalition army has been thus far incapable of staving off daily attacks. Abizaid explained that “though there are only a few of them, they’ve been hard to pin down because many of them are located well-outside of the oil refineries and pipeline perimeters where we’ve focused most of our resources.”
In light of the difficulties that reconstruction efforts are now facing, Iraqi Civilian Administrator L. Paul Bremer flew to Washington for an emergency meeting with top White House officials this Wednesday. He explained in a press conference thereafter that “I think it’s clear that we’re not wanted in Iraq. I won’t speak for others involved in this reconstruction project but my feelings are very hurt. We give and give and all we get in return is resentment. Well, if that’s how they’re going to be about it, we’re leaving. They can rebuild their own damn country.” President Bush commented on the matter as well, indicating that “even as we were blowing the place up, I had a pretty good idea that we were never going to put it back together.”
The President sought, in his meeting with Bremer, to accelerate an effort to shift authority for reconstruction over to the Iraqi governing council, contending that “when I said we were willing to do anything in our power to give the Iraqis the gift of democracy, I thought it was clear that I was being sarcastic. Besides, I never anticipated that we’d have to face 5,000 of them. I mean, it’s one thing to kill thousands from above. It’s another altogether when they start to defend themselves. We will not tolerate this monstrous terrorism. It’s high time that all non-Halliburton personnel return home.”
This policy change, which is now a full-reversal from the gradually slackening pledge to see the reconstruction of Iraq through to its complete realization, comes close on the heels of a leaked CIA report that projects a bleak outlook for the future of operations there. The report, endorsed by Bremer, characterized postwar Iraq as the most popular destination for foreigners seeking work, indicating that “anti-American insurgency is the fastest growing sector in an otherwise stagnating job-market.” Orchestrating an approximated 35 attacks a day, the resistance is said to be motivated by its hatred for freedom. As to suggestions by some that Saddam Hussein had conceived of this insurgency prior to the fall of Baghdad, and was now conducting it from a hidden location in the Middle East, the President was critical, scoffing that “everybody knows that’s impossible. We knocked down every last statue of that guy we could find.”
Regardless of the origin of the threat, most administration and Pentagon officials have privately agreed that none of the violence in Iraq is noteworthy enough to be broadcast on American television. Contrary to round-the-clock coverage furnished upon the visually spectacular and sexually stimulating Shock and Awe campaign, which commenced the second Iraq war by killing the still-alive Saddam Hussein, the attacks which have claimed several hundred coalition troops since May have received little-to-no actual video coverage on America’s slew of 24/7 cable news networks. A media analyst for the White House, who requested anonymity, explained that “while Americans tend to associate dying Arabs with progress, they differ with the president over the issue of dying Americans. They see this as a bad thing. While we don’t happen to agree, we’ve taken the precautionary public relations measure of only embedding reporters in units that tend to camel ranches and make snacks for more combat-oriented units. If that doesn’t get the American people back behind us, we’re going to ‘inadvertently’ lose another 19 year-old white girl dishwasher behind enemy lines. Americans love crap like that.”
The reconstruction effort took another hit this week , following Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Tokyo, when Japan said that it would not contribute troops to the coalition at this time. Arguing that the situation in Iraq was too unstable, Japanese officials declined to take part in the new offensive designed to stamp out the insurgency. President Bush commented on the tactical setback, conceding that “we are now second-guessing the wisdom of sending Rumsfeld on diplomatic endeavors.” A Japanese newspaper indicated that during his brief visit there earlier this week, the Defense Secretary complained bitterly about how low his hotel toilet was to the ground, admonished the Japanese people to ‘lighten up about nuclear holocaust jokes’ and was accused of physically harassing numerous members of Japanese parliament. Rumsfeld explained in a subsequent briefing that “they’re so small I just couldn’t help it. Besides, there’s nothing in the Geneva Convention that says I can’t hand out noogies at my own free will.” There are some in the White House, however, who acknowledge that Japan’s abstention from involvement may be about more than simply how big an asshole Donald Rumsfeld is. With an attack in Nasiriyah this week that claimed 31 lives, among them 19 Italian fighters, providing assistance to the Iraqi reconstruction initiative is even less desirable than it was this summer, when Poland donated 250 partially trained military shovel operators to the campaign.
In spite of mounting evidence that the war in Iraq is succeeding equally as well as Bush’s Texas governorship, his foray into MLB team ownership, his collapsed stewardship of an energy corporation, his aborted military service and his humiliating academic record, the president remains upbeat about the war on terror. During a Friday press conference, he vowed that “soon our armies of darkness will march over this earth and strike down all those who stand in their wake. A wave of biblical purgation the likes of which you have never seen will rain down from the heavens and hellfire will engulf us from below. I have seen a vision of the future, and it is the gnarled, twisted apocalyptic aftermath of our struggle. The world is ours and all that lay within is ours to destroy. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. . . . . ha ha ha.”
And remember, as always, the monkey goes where the wind blows.