Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4
What’s up doc? It’s loony tunes here at my place. Mrs. May has gone to mass, and I’m home alone having delusions again. You remember back on April Fools Day when I was writing that we were headed to a quicksand war, while sane folks were saying that we were going to take over Iraq in a few weeks, and have the whole place running smoothly by summer? Well, everyone called me the April Fool for my prediction, and I’m still imagining that I was right. You can see that all those visits I’ve paid you haven’t helped a bit, and I’m thinking I’m worse off now than I was when we started.
Do you remember how I lost it after the war started because I thought that the war dead were being unreported – especially those of the Battle of Baghdad? Well I just imagined reading an essay in today today’s Houston Chronicle by Helen Thomas “Only by knowing can we share grief for soldiers.” Reading this kind of headline, of course, makes me think I’m as screwy as that Nobel-laureate schizo in A Beautiful Mind, ‘cause I realize I’m grasping for confirmation of my crazy theories, in true lunatic fashion. [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases]
You know that crank idea
of mine that every inflamed public cruising for a war finds rabble rousers
willing to lead it for cash and credit?
Well, I just imagined some jingoistic clap-trap by that journalistic
Jezebel, Tommy Freedman, headlined “As
the West changes, so must our alliances.”
I imagined that the Pulitzer Prostitute was egging on more trouble by
blowing off
I even imagine that the French and Germans are thinking in the same crazy way as me, ‘cause they’re starting to hold joint military maneuvers, as if they needed to make a little point. Back in that April Fools piece I wrote:
“Our
plan for a quick knockout – the classic aim of blitz warfare – is disappearing,
and a protracted war means more time for international frictions to spark new
conflicts with an irritable
Back on July 8, I published (or at any rate, imagine I published) “Worried about the quicksand of war in Iraq” for the Chronicle, and in it I wrote:
“As
a former Army intelligence officer and Desert Storm volunteer, I worry a
lot. I worry about wobbly war plans; I
worry that Rumsfeld is canning generals who fail to tell him what he wants to
hear; I worry that the U.S. body count could climb from one to day to one per
hour; and I worry that the president who as a young American prudently avoided
the sweltering jungles of Vietnam will send a generation of young Americans to
the sweltering deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In short, I worry that we are sinking deeper into the quicksand – and
we’re trying to thrash our way out.”
Both essays were pure
paranoia, of course, reinforced by my continuing delusions. In July I even deluded myself that the prez
was pissed about my opinions getting published (a couple of days after Joe
Wilson’s), and that I might wind up as dead as Dr.
David Kelly. My
Chronicle editors didn’t help much by pretending that they were scared too, and not printing any letters of reply to what seemed to
my muddled mind to be the most stinging condemnation of the prez to date. They even took sudden vacations when I sent
my next essay about Private
Jessica and
Doc, clearly I need
help. We’ve got to talk when you get
time. I imagine I’m losing it again
and need you to tinker with my thinker.
Hell, I keep imagining that 2+2=4, but every media outlet in
More madness to come…,
Captain May
PS: I have one last delusion, which is that my Gentle Readers (Thom Shanker, Frank Michel and Tommy Freedman among them) might want to avail themselves of your kind counsel to do a reality check as well. Do you mind a bit of free advertising? (Richard Pesikoff, M.D., [contact details omitted by Editor])
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