Any Casualities? (Iraq war talk)

“Where does The Wasteland end?” said Elliot.

“The end is the beginning,” a mystic said.

“The inside is the outside veiled in mystery,” said a child playing with DNA building blocks.

“We need to make sure, absolutely sure we connect the dots between 9/11 and Iraq,” said a military analyst. “If we are successful,” he sighed, “the politicians will get out of the way and give us a ton of money - maybe even a glorious $250 billion or more to rebuild what we’ve destroyed. It’s our way or hit the heavily mined highway of death. You’re either with us or with the terrorists is our message to the world.”

“Yes,” barked a general, “these malicious vermin are the obstacles that stand between the Iraqi people and security. They are terrorists - no, they are rebels - no, they are freedom fighters, no, they are guerillas, no, they are...insurgents...”

“Whatever. The road through Babylon is endless. This campaign will be well received. We will liberate the oppressed,” said an old white haired man named Regime wearing a pacemaker. He loved a girl from Wyoming with a big spread.

Esteemed well qualified and duly elected members of a House on Main Street and their colleagues from a Congress seeking another term and automatic pay raises looked at him with contempt, disdain, incredulity, suspicion, amazement and pure terror.

“We ain’t in no fucking jungle on this Jack,” sneered a nautical seal looking for approval from his ringmaster. “This war is on track jack.”

“Collateral damage is a sorry fact of life,” said a man with a whip. He cut through red tape and everyone got out of his way.

“Bring them on I say,” yelled Bumsfeld. “Our God is bigger than their God for God’s sake. Look, it’s easy, here’s what we do. We know the United Nations is useless, so, we’ll create false claims of nuclear and biological threats which plays into the 9/11 fear.”

Curveball came in for short relief. “I know where it is.”

“Where what is?” asked Bumsfeld.

“All the Iraqi mobile labs full of toxins and nerve agents.”

“For an alcoholic spy and fabricator you have a lot of nerve,” screamed the Tenant. He used to be Lew but now he was just a plain Jane Tenant from a housing project. He was on a speaking tour making big bucks when it happened.

“Look,” said Curveball. “I gave the Germans the high hard stuff. But they don’t understand the American pastime. They said I was past my prime. They co-opted me with women and booze. A hell of a lethal combination, let me tell you. They grilled me over a hot flame. I was beside myself. I became a double agent.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Bumsfeld, “and your mother wears combat boots. Anyway, then, we distort flimsy evidence from a worthless intel source saying the dictator is an immediate and direct threat to our national security. He’ll attack us in 45 minutes.”

“But,” said the President, “that won’t give me time to finish reading the story about goats to the elementary kids.”

“No butts sir,” said his spokesperson. “You’ll just have to skip a few pages.”

“Isn’t this strategy too vague and deceptive?” asked a garbage collector.

“Vague and deceptive stuff happens all the time,” said the man cracking his cool whip. “What planet are you from, amigo? We have the national media eating out of our filthy hands with all this flag waving patriotic bullshit. So, we con the world with these fictitious stories about the dictator as a threat to us with his weapons of mass distraction and start a war to remove him from power.”

“Brilliant,” said a very rich civilian military contractor from Texas. “What then?”

“It’s easy. We know the dictator’s been bluffing all along to maintain his power base. Just ask Curveball here when he sobers up. He’s never had weapons of mass destruction but the world doesn’t know that fact. His military will collapse like a house of cards. We send in, what, maybe 150,000 military forces, - mostly young poorly trained national guard units from America’s middle and lower class mind you - take some losses sure, but that’s the price of doing business right, while we establish a quasi-official coalition government with us in total control of everything.”

“What about the local people?” asked a relief worker.

“Screw them I say. We’ve liberated them from a dictator for God’s sake. They should be eternally grateful to us and get down on their knees in the desert sand thanking us.

A public relations flack had an idea.

“For propaganda purposes we’ll let them form a provisional government so they’ll be distracted and think they have real input in how their country is going to be run. It’s like we’ve controlled Kuwait with our remote for years. They increase production when we tell them and they shut up when we hit the off button.”

“When do we get the contracts?” asked an oil man from Texas washing his bloody hands.

“All in good time. Rebuilding the oil industry will be tied into larger deals. We’ll start you off with easy contract stuff first; mail delivery, detention camps, roads, schools, building hospitals and supplying food to the troops. That will keep your people busy for what, 5-10 years, easy.”

“Sounds great,” said the contractor. “This is going to make a lot of my friends very happy.”

“Hey,” said Hally Burden, “war is good business.”

Everyone had their own agenda. They blazed a trail as beaters fanned out into the environmental impact statement. The grass was very high. They inhaled, found Kyoto on a map, deleted it from their servers while Pablo and Salvador created sketches for an upcoming show at the asylum.

It was sold out with standing room only and their accountant was pleased beyond words. It was a good return on their investment (ROI). His calculator needed an overhaul.

An Indigo child rose up. “It’s not so much that there is something strange about time...the thing that’s strange is what’s going on inside time. We will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.”

“This show is X-rated. Get your ass out of the room and get to bed,” yelled their divorced manic-depressed father, “or else I will beat you with this stick and stone your mother to death for adultery.”

A bearded fellow from the Saudi Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice spoke.

“We agree. Lashes, stoning and amputation of limbs for flaunting our rigid Islamic laws is true justice.”