Tuesday , March 19 2024
Be prepared for some sort of startling announcement from the White House about Iraq in the near future.

Satire: Partition – A New Solution For Iraq

(The following information was found in Washington D.C. by unknown people and distributed to various other unknown people on the Internet. Given the location where it was found, its provenance is obviously good even if it has no basis in fact or bearing on reality.

It appears to be the transcription of a secret meeting of the National Security Council, with people obviously aware they were being recorded because of their use of code names. We can only guess at the identities of some of those involved, but it seems fair to assume that “Sure Shot” (S.S) refers to Vice President Cheney, Red Hot Momma, (R.H.M.) to Secretary Rice, and Top Hat (T.H.) to President Bush. We have no clue as to the others involved, but since their contributions are usually ignored and largely insignificant, they don’t really matter.

Below is a faithful reproduction of the transcript, just as I received it. I’m telling the truth, so you can believe me.)

S.S.: Gentlemen, we need to (sound of a throat being cleared), oh sorry, and lady…geez I just can’t help thinking of you as one of the boys. (Sound of general laughter gradually trails off into embarrassed silence.) Well, ahem, anyway, as I was starting to say, we need to take a serious look at the situation in Iraq and the whole government issue. The stalemate over their parliament is just not ending.

T.H.: Geez Dick…what…Oh yeah, sorry. Sure Shot, I thought you said your people we’re handling this. You and Rumsfeld…what, oh crap he ain’t here; what does it matter if I call him by name, we’re supposed to have calmed the rag heads down by now. How am I going to be able to invade Iran if we can’t get these dummies to behave? You told me to say the war was over so that I could start a new one. I want a new war to wage Dick. This one’s boring…What? Oh, damn, Sure Shot.

S.S.: Well, Top Hat, we all admire your enthusiasm and your eagerness to continue the agenda (murmurs of agreement), but sometimes you can’t expect the unexpected.

T.H.: Well thanks for stating the fucking obvious, Sure Shot, you can’t expect the unexpected. I’m not the press; can you please talk something close to English when you talk to me? Goddamn it, I need some bourbon. Is this going to take a while? The Rangers are playing and I’d like to catch a couple of innings. Hey Connie, can we get the Secret Service boys to tune in the Ranger’s game on their earpieces? One of you boys can give me the score as we go, okay… thanks. Oh all right Dick, just keep your shirt on (sound of bottle and glass being placed on table). Oh hey thanks, I guess I can cope with what you got to say now. (Sound of liquid being poured.) Go on now, you look you might hurt yourself if you keep frowning like that. Don’t know if I can round up yet another heart for you so soon.

S.S.: Well as I was saying, we all admire your eagerness to get on with our agenda in the Mid East, but we really can’t afford to leave Iraq and go after Iran until things settle down a lot more. We need the government there to be in place. The problem is that the three major groups can’t agree on anything important. We also need to keep all three of them happy or we end up with even worse problems than we have now. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious or easy solution to the situation. We can’t take over governing the country again; that will tie up far too many troops and lose us what allies we have there already.

T.H.: Well, so what is their problem, anyway? We got rid of Saddam, we gave them the vote, what more do they want? Some people just aren’t very grateful, are they? They should just be happy with the fact that we’re letting them have their own country. It’s s not like they’re civilized or anything; good God, half of them don’t even drink.

R.H.M.: If I may T.H., Sure Shot, thank you. The problem is sir, I don’t think they’re ungrateful; it’s just that we’re talking about two separate sects and one group who are a different race altogether. While the Sunnis and the Shiites are both Muslim, they practice different types and follow different leaders.

T.H.: Like Catholics and Protestants, you mean?

R.H.M.: Very astute sir, quite similar. Plus the Kurds are a different people completely and have wanted independence from Iraq for ages. Even though there is one group in the majority, there are enough of the other two to create problems. On top of that, each group has experienced discrimination at the hands of the other.

Saddam was a Sunni, so even though they are a minority, they got all the favourable jobs and treatment. Now they are frightened that the Shiites will want revenge. The Kurds, on the other hand, have been hunted and killed by the other two groups, and really don’t trust either of them.”

T.H.: You could say they are like a Muslim Jew, then couldn’t you? Catholics and Protestants may not get along, but we all hate Jews, ha, ha, ha, ha.

R.H.M.: Yes sir, very similar again. So you can understand the depth of the mistrust between the three main political parties, and why Sure Shot and I are having such a hard time solving this situation. It’s generations of mistrust that can’t be overcome overnight, and might even take years, if not a generation or two passing, before they begin to trust each other again. The best we can hope for is to find some compromise candidate for Prime Minister that will be acceptable to all parties. This means we will have to ensure that the current Prime Minister “agrees” to step down.

T.H.: Damn right he’ll agree, or he might just get to visit Cuba for a few months, and not with Fidel. (Sound of liquid being poured into a glass.) What I don’t understand is why, with all our damned intelligence, are we so surprised by these turns of events. How come no one saw this coming? That’s why I gave you this job, Sure Shot; you said you knew all about how we could best handle it.

I didn’t think that meant so your boys could line their pockets. By the way, you better warn them to start covering their tracks a little better; the auditor general is cracking down. They’re not just stealing from the Iraqis now, they’re skimming off the top of U.S. money too. Nah, don’t worry about it too much, we got worse problems than a few hundred million vanishing.

I think we need to be rethinking the way we’re going about this. Trying to make one country outta three people just ain’t looking like it’s working. Why can’t we partition up the country into three parts, and give each of them a chunk for their own, which they can rule autonomously?

That way they won’t be arguing over who gets to be in charge, ‘cause they all get to be in charge of their own little piece of the pie. Each of them can get a chunk of the oil fields so they don’t squabble about that, and then they can govern their own people. Give everybody a couple of months to move into their new neighbourhoods and — bingo bango — three new countries and everyone’s happy.

We can set a deadline of the fourth of July so they know who they have to thank for it every year. Our troops pull out, my approval rating goes through the roof — just in time to invade Iran, and quash those mullah jerks once and for all. I don’t know why you guys didn’t think of that. It sure seems like the easy answer to me. I bet you no one’s ever even thought of it before.

But that’s all these situations need is common sense, which I gotta say seems like it sure is in short supply around here on some days. I wish you guys would come to me sooner with your little problems; it would sure save us all a lot of trouble.

I want you guys to get to work with this with Rumsfeld right away, and I want to see a logistics report about it on my desk in a week or so. If there’s nothing else, me and my buddy Jack here are going to catch the last of the Rangers game. All right class dismissed.

That’s where the transcript ended, with T.H. leaving the room. There was no date on the paper, so there’s no indication as to what stage these plans are at. But I’d think we should all be prepared for some sort of startling announcement from the White House about Iraq in the near future.

About Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of three books commissioned by Ulysses Press, "What Will Happen In Eragon IV?" (2009) and "The Unofficial Heroes Of Olympus Companion" and "Introduction to Greek Mythology For Kids". Aside from Blogcritics he contributes to Qantara.de and his work has appeared in the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and has been translated into numerous languages in multiple publications.

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