Echoes From Saddam Hussein

​2004

​Chapter 1

​Saddam Wears a Beard

I’m still and forevermore President of Iraq and remind you that ninety-nine percent of the people support me. Imagine George W. Bush telling me to get out of my country within forty-eight hours. He’s an arrogant little man who considers Iraq a cowboy movie set and himself the gunslinger everyone fears. Really, no one’s afraid of Bush the man. In person I’d slap his face and overwhelm him in debate. He needs the American military machine to blow his hot air. Even that didn’t frighten me. I remained in Iraq after the criminal invasion of April 2003 and commanded my forces until they disintegrated and still I stayed, eluding bombs, bullets, and barking dogs, and stood defiantly when the infidels found me bearded and unbathed in a hole.

Many laughed and said my fall had been ignominious. On the contrary I felt like a wounded warrior poised for the next offensive. Hundreds of thousands of enemies have fallen under my sword, and I’ll soon be free to fight again. My captors are learning their illegal efforts to break me will certainly fail as the international community asks many painful questions. Why was I initially forced into court without an attorney at my side? Why weren’t Iraqi reporters allowed to attend? Why was video footage released without sound? Why were tapes later censored and re-released? Can you imagine a power that occupied the United States denying American reporters access to the trial of a former president? All this is unconscionable and why Arabs and others see my trial as a sham and another insult ground into their faces by the world’s solitary and ever-righteous superpower.

The Americans are also cowardly in dictating that my trial not be televised either live or on a delayed basis. They fear my charisma and rhetorical ability to attack injustice would galvanize people throughout the Middle East. All Arabs are proud I’m willing to fight our enemies and, when economic catastrophe inevitably overwhelms Iraq, citizens will demand a strong and decisive leader, a man like Stalin, a man like me.

Everyone in Iraq, and surely most in America, realize that Bush and his henchmen are lying that it’s only Al-Qaeda and other foreign elements perpetrating violence in Iraq. Just read the Associated Press report of July ninth, 2004 that quotes U.S. military officials who insist the insurgency is comprised of far more than five thousand men. They either acknowledge that or flunk elementary math. The Americans killed four thousand warriors in April yet still face more enemies every day. Iraqi Sunnis are outraged at losing power and privileges I bestowed them, and forming regional cells led by tribal sheiks who can summon thousands more fighters, assassins, and bomb makers.

It’s ominous for Americans that in recent months many of their unnamed officials said insurgents have so much support they cannot be militarily defeated. That opinion was again reported on July ninth. Does the Bush administration read these reports? We must presume that George W. Bush does not because he hates to read or study or be contradicted. His world, like that of malicious Dick Cheney, is eternally simple: the bad guy is only who America says he is, and he is Saddam. But as the death toll of American soldiers soars, maybe someone else in the administration will concede that many Iraqis are unhappy about the occupation, that they can’t be forever repressed, and the solution will have to come through diplomacy. That won’t happen without my leadership. Why listen to Bush? He may not hold office much longer. Another Massachusetts blue nose, John Kerry, could be my next opponent.

​Moderating the Secret Bush-Kerry Debate

Earlier this week a distinguished Washington, D.C. intelligence operative called to tell me he’d just learned I possessed information that further exposed the hedonistic lifestyles and unrestrained lassitude of the top two presidential candidates. He urged me not to lambaste the leisurely lads online and thereby demolish not merely their current campaigns but their entire political careers. He emphasized that such a sequence would result in Ralph Nader being elected president.

That’s democracy, I said.

Listen, if you restrain yourself, and let the leading men defend themselves in a secret debate, then you can moderate this historical exchange, which will be televised on pay-per-view before the third official debate.

What’s my take?

He told me.

I suppose, then, that it’s my patriotic duty.

The agent, intimately connected to both camps, hastily hammered out the terms. Both candidates agreed to be smuggled in gunny sacks out of their current accommodations and flown to an unspecified ICBM silo where they’d meet in the special doom room where two ominous keys, too far apart for even the most long-limbed fellow to simultaneously touch, must be turned at once for strategic activation. Since my real physical identity is unknown, I was able to take a commercial flight to a large Midwest airport but from there was transported in the missile tube of a sleek fighter plane.

As I would offer only my voice and not appear before camera, I did not receive the attention of two gorgeous makeup artists who skillfully, and not without flirtation, prepared the candidates. Kerry opted for his now famous orange makeup and Bush asked for a hardy, soil-of-Midland touch up. After an hour of treatment, both men looked ready to win this war. They were seated by two deferential generals, and cameras ignited.

Gentlemen, the accusations regarding your lamentable work habits are quite severe, I stated. I want you to know that I’ve only taken off three complete days this calendar year.

Then you’re a stupid son-of-a-gun, said Bush.

My opponent has put it indelicately, but I agree, Kerry said.

You’ve both shoved yourselves into the very corner one assumed you’d be trying to evacuate. Very well. I shall direct my first question to President Bush. Sir, the Democrats are saying you’re ‘lazy’ and have an ‘aversion to hard work.’ Is that true?

Certainly not. I’ve busted more golf balls while in office than any hombre who came before me. And keep in mind, lots of that took place under hot Texas sun.

It is absolutely typical for my opponent to credit himself for mindless exertion while the real working men and women of this country are blistering their hands in honest endeavor for the meager wages this president wants them to have.

Listen, Senator, I said. I have to ask you about your windsurfing, the real details, not superficial attacks by the Republicans. How much time do you really squander blowing around out there?

First, I must emphasize, that wind surfing is manifestly more difficult than playing golf on stable land. Skipping across a harsh sea, buffeted by waves, sliced by salty winds, is not man’s natural means of movement. It is in fact terribly difficult and always leaves my legs horrifically sore.

That demonstrates what pitiful condition my opponent is in, Bush said. How can you expect to defeat the terrorists when you aren’t tough enough to get through a sissy sport without moaning?

The president is an appalling hypocrite, Kerry responded. He used to brag about running several miles four times a week. He didn’t quit because it was a shameless waste of time. In fact, this president quit jogging because he couldn’t take the pain in his knees. Running is man’s natural means of travel, yet this man pooped out.

Senator, when the sun comes up, I challenge you to race me ten kilometers, winner take all.

You’ll not get four more years that way, or any other, Mr. President. If you’d exerted yourself in examining faulty pre-war intelligence reports as much as you did in clearing brush from your ranch, you might not have decided to fight the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You’re sending the wrong signals to our troops and to our allies. They’d never follow a gawky guy like you. They know I’ve led us into the right war in the right place at the right time.

Gentlemen, please leave politics and foreign policy and all other nonsense out of this debate, I ordered.

I challenge the president to play me one-on-one in football.

I’ll plant your aching fanny in the sod.

The game would of course be gentlemanly two-hand touch below the waist.

Listen, I’m from Texas, and that ain’t how we play. What you play ain’t football. It’s the pansy game the Kennedys played.

It’s disgraceful for a former college cheerleader to impugn America’s greatest political family.

They ain’t even the greatest from Massachusetts.

You just emphasized your Texas roots, I said.

We’re from wherever we want to be from, including Florida, and I’m telling you we’re the only family that’s had two presidents.

Hold it, I said. There was the Adams family.

Those guys were runts, the president countered. My dad started at first base for the Yale varsity.

He may have batted left handed but was no Lou Gehrig, Kerry said.

Bad-mouth my dad, and I’ll kick your butt.

That’s what troubles so many of our friends in the world about this president.

Senator, I said, stay on the assigned topics.

Damn right, said Bush. Why have you taken off more than sixty days from the campaign trail this year, and thirteen since the convention? While you were windsurfing and touching men’s bottoms, I was blowing by you in the polls, and that’s a lead I won’t be giving up.

Mr. President, I was working on my days away from the campaign. What were you achieving for the country the forty percent of the time during your presidency you’ve either been down on the ranch or sailing at Kennebunkport or hiding in Camp David? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. We already know none of your activities has benefited the American people in time of war.

"This opponent is like so many liberals. He thinks he knows what other people are doing and exactly how they’re thinking. I guarantee you, I’ve got offices at all those places and work hard when I’m there. I work even harder there than at the White House because there’re fewer distractions.

I also want to point out that Senator Kerry is a kept man. His wife’s got about a billion bucks, and he doesn’t know anything about the real men and women of this country.

Mr. President, that is a despicable cheap shot. My wife and I may be immersed in luxury, but it’s not our fault. She inherited the money from her first husband, Senator Heinz, a Republican. Her patrimony is our burden.

It’s your ticket. You’re an inept senator and couldn’t have made a living in the world of honest business.

Balderdash. In fact, no wildcatter ever drilled more dry holes than you.

At least I didn’t have to tug my wife’s skirt for money.

"Mr. President, I’m an oft-wounded veteran of war, and not all of my wounds