Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4

December 5, Email to Thom Shanker, NY Times

Yo mascot, where in the hell have you been off to this time? Please don’t tell me to Iraq again, because your close call with Wolfwits should have taught you some sense. In your email you said you’d be back on December 7. Inauspicious date, Thom. Would you happen to be coming in from Japan?

Well, when you get back down to earth (and I’m still waiting), you’ll need some geopolitical grounding, so here I go again, writing – gratis – to refine your perspective.

I’ve been playing Pop Goes the Weasel again with General Weasely Clark, and I’ve got to say, he’s fun. I’ve been watching him from the time I saw him collude with CNN’s Fredericka, Aaron Brown and Larry King to cover up the start of the Battle of Baghdad, April 4, at around 9:30 p.m. (Eastern Time).

He quit CNN a week later, making sure to stress his being “objective” (i.e., not doing propaganda for the prez). A bit later, Victoria Clark quit the Pentagon for the same reason, then Ari Fleischer quit the White House. Everyone figured that the shit would hit the fan at some point, and no one wanted to get splattered.

The weasel has popped up with some amazing allegations since he became objective again, showing that he’s the best opportunist on the block: He says that the Bushlings contacted him on 911 to get him in on a Skull-and-Bones idea for a war to take control of all of CentCom. Reasons? Clark says revenge, business and Israel are key influences – what do you say, tovarisch pisatel, or should I phrase it differently? What are your bosses who wanted the war telling you to say? Shucks, man, I’m waiting for you to write something with some intellectual depth to it, and I think the real reasons behind the war are a deep place to start. To bad we didn’t start with that part of the discussion before we jumped into the quicksand…

You wanna know what Captain May sez about Weasely Clark? Watch him every time he pops up, because it’s in his weasely interests to snitch the prez out. And no one can do the job better; you see, the weasel was in on the scheme from the git-go, Thom, and every word he has said about the Bushlings trying to collaborate with him is half true. The whole truth is that he was collaborating back with them. [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases]

Yep, Weasely Clark is going to get the Captain May award for the cleverest embedded person of all: the first one out of bed. It’s kinda like my little war joke: the best way out of the quicksand war is simply Quick! From the time the cover-up of the Battle of Baghdad started, Weasely Clark knew that our Constitutional foundations were cracked – “collateral damage” of the Bush Team war – and that sooner or later, there would be hell to pay. He knew that the war was going to turn into quicksand, and has been building his fighting position as an antiwar warrior ever since. He has chosen his ground well, and he’s going to try to be another Ike Eisenhower with a pull-’em-out pledge for the elections.

I’ve been in touch with his campaign folks off and on since I helped his anti-Bush arguments along in my last published op-ed (July 8, Houston Chronicle, “Worried about quicksand of war in Iraq”), and they’ve asked me what I want from the general in exchange for putting my immense insight at his disposal. The answer is simple: If he’ll come square with the public over the cover-up of the Battle of Baghdad, I’ll become his speech writer, and make him seem as smart as he may actually be.

And just how smart is the guy? Well, he was a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford, and that does say a lot. I got tangled up in sheets for a year in an affair a few years ago with one of ‘em. Yep, a New Zealander, Penelope Brook (used to work for the New Zealand president). Nowadays she’s World Bank jet-set chic chick (first-class, always) who reads poetry, paints watercolors, and plays Brahms on both the CD player and the classical piano. She writes fair love letters and has received some of the best ever written (I can prove both claims). Give her a call to talk about the Infowar in D.C. sometime. I don’t mind dealing her a bit of attention now, seeing as how she turned as yellow as your colleague Davy Corn at The Nation when I clued her into the realities of the Infowar. Yep, I called her Saturday morning, July 12, and told her enough that she was plenty afraid by the time she hung up the phone a quarter hour later. Monday morning she was gone on vacation for a couple of months, out of the country. Yep, little buddy, she was international and connected, and she figured that leaving D.C. during that week of Bushling black ops was a savvy move. Heck, maybe she knew the Valerie Plame hit was coming (it happened the day she left town). Penelope plugs in, in some interesting ways, believe me, so I wouldn’t be surprised at anything she did.

I studied Latin and Greek under another Oxfordian, an elderly, brilliant Jewish lady from Argentina, Professor Dora Pozzi. She’s been teaching Classics since before I was born, and has forgotten more than I’ve ever learned (or than you ever knew existed). She was a Spartan trainer when it came to me, and made me work hard enough to develop some facility with languages. I’ll never thank her enough.

And now there’s Weasely Clark to consider, an American Rhodes Scholar, another Oxfordian. Well, by dint of knowing the highly entertaining Penelope Brook and the highly intellectual Dora Pozzi, I have an intuition about the weasel’s true mental prowess. Add to that my understanding of just how much discipline it took for him to be number-one at West Point, throw in the fact that he was an efficient if uninspired prose-writer for the Army’s top brass, and you’ll be ready for my conclusion:

Weasely Clark may be smartest girl I’ve ever seen, Penelope Brook and Professor Pozzi included. There, that’s the highest compliment I can give the general. Hell, if I’m ever going to write speeches for anyone again, it’ll be President Weasely Clark. When do you think he’ll pop the question to me?

“Captain May, sir, will you please be my speech writer, and tell me what to do if anything really important happens in foreign affairs?”

He won’t be the first general for whom I’ve written or thought. Did I ever tell you about the stuff I wrote for Colon Powell [sic], Thom? Yep, that’s no shit, either. It was back in ‘97 and I did some stuff for him when he addressed a big Houston company. (Not Enron – and ask me about my Ken Lay/Mattress Mack story some other time.)

Well, General Powell was going to be a surprise speaker, so the H-town corporate brass assigned him a code name to hide his identity: Panther (yeah, like Black Panther, Thom). The white boys were just having a little fun, and all the respect they pretended to show him in front of the audience was just part of the joke. Same Houston white boys used to talk about Tigger Woods (yeah, rhymes with nigger, Thom) at their country clubs hereabouts. What kind of white boys am I talking about, Thom? Man, the kind I knew back when I interviewed Bush to see if I wanted to be his speech writer, the rich Texas Republicans, the peckerwoods!

Well, since they started cooking up a Crusade after 911, I’ve decided that I don’t like mean-assed white trash any more, and I want to see ‘em thrown out of the White Folks’ House ASAP. Yep, and I intend to see Weasely in there with Lieberman (is that how you spell it?) as Veep. I could enjoy a stint writing intelligent, eloquent stuff for Weasely every once in a while, and maybe Grandpa Lieberman would teach me some Hebrew on the sly, (just enough to get me started, mind you) to go along with my Greek and Latin. I’d like to be the best-educated atheist in America, and I’m getting nowhere until I can talk it over with Yahweh in his own language.

Anyhow, I think it’s time that the U.S. had a Jewish Veep. Didn’t the Confederacy have one in Alexander Stephens? Well, it’s time you Yankees caught up, don’t you think? And as for Clark being half-Jewish, shucks, I don’t care about that. It may even help him with some folks. You know Thom, at Thanksgiving my own mama finally told me the story of her adoption back in Beaumont, Texas. She spent years looking for records of her parents, which were mostly destroyed as a matter of course in those days. It turns out that mama was the love-child of a daring captain (yep, runs in the blood) and a young Jewish woman. The poor gal had to put her daughter, my mama, up for adoption, and never saw her again.

Mama asked me if I felt different now that I knew the truth about our family and I said it didn’t make any difference to me, as long as I could still be a fallen Baptist. I asked for another turkey leg, and before I’d finished half of it I decided that I still liked my mama just fine. You know, I reflected that I’d probably have liked her just as much if I’d known her mama was Jewish in the first place. So yeah, I’m all for a Jewish White Folks’ House, with me as the speech writer (if Mike the Moslem can come as my research assistant and martial arts student). [Love it! --Ed]

I know, you say you think some of my ideas are far-fetched, but is any of it as far-fetched as a trumped-up imperial war or a covered-up Battle of Baghdad? The Clark folks already love my stuff, and every time I mention ‘em it gives ‘em a thrill to think that my offer to Weasely still stands. I just need for him to repent and be baptized for the unnatural sin of being embedded by Boy George. I know the general’s not proud of what he did (or rather, what got done to him), and he’s looking for the right words to explain his former compromising position, so here I go. This is a pro bono media release, by Captain Eric May, MI, USA, commanding Ghost Troop, 3/7 Cavalry, and it’s for Weasely Clark to tell the prez and the people:

The Weasel’s tale:

“On the night of April 4, 2003, as I was analyzing the war for CNN, the Battle of Baghdad started with an attack against the American forces then holding the Baghdad International Airport. Over the course of the next four days significant combat raged across the city and several hundred American lives were lost. It was hard for me to remain objective and not show my emotion then, because I have seen combat before, and like anyone who has seen it, I don’t like to be reminded of it. But I – and all the media – had a job to do: We had to preserve the operational security of American military forces while those forces were still engaged in combat. We had to keep our mouths shut up and our cameras shut off because we knew that anything we said and showed would have been heard and seen by the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein. I salute the care that all my fellow journalists showed at that critical juncture of the war in Iraq. <Applause, especially from the journalists.>

“I can’t salute what the president did next, though. Instead of releasing the information about the Battle of Baghdad to the American people after we captured the city, he played politics with it and kept it hushed up. This president has taken George Orwell’s ideas about mind control out of English Literature and put them into American History! <Applause, especially from those who have actually read George Orwell or American History.>

“No, I can’t salute George W. Bush’s cover-up of the deaths of loyal, brave soldiers. In fact, I can’t do anything but denounce it, in the strongest terms, now. President Bush, you have built up a wall of silence about both the heroism and suffering of Baghdad. Tear it down! <Applause, especially from those who catch the Berlin Wall allusion.>

“When you are on the level with the American people, we the people will decide what we should do next. No one else has the right to decide for us. The United States of America has insisted on the point that we, the people, rule our government, not the other way around! <Applause, especially by those commanded to applaud by the Clark campaign.>

We are not a bunch of mindless followers, and we need to remind you of that! <Applause, especially from all the mindless followers.>

“I’m saying all this to you, Mr. President, just as our country’s founders once said it to another George, and his name was King George of England!” <End of speech, thunderous ovation.>

“Down with King George! Down with King George! chants the audience.” Then they take up another cry, a “bullshit” variant: “Bu-shit! Bu-shit! Bu-shit!”

Ah, sweet fantasy.

Hey Thom, can you find out what my buddies over at Pentagon public affairs think of the prose? I like to give ‘em a little professional development training every now and then. And do me a favor and tell Alison Bettencourt, Major Martha Brooks and Lieutenant Colonel John (a black brother) that Captain May sez hi, and I’m ready to compare notes with ‘em again whenever they want.

Shucks, after the Infowar is over and George (King George of America) is hiding-out with the England royals, I might just go back and teach professional ethics to the Defense Information School (DINFOS) students, especially those who aspire to be, like your humble captain, public affairs officers. Lord knows, the girls there (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Coast Guard, God bless ‘em) are a lot better looking than the capital chattel (Penelope Brook included) I used to bump into in my D.C. days, and I’d rather confabulate with the company-grade officers like me, than the star-struck generals like Weasely Clark, anyhow.

I’ll just wear my dobok and black belt when I’m teaching, walking silently in bare feet with a six-foot rattan staff in hand, on the prowl for the inattentive. I pity any officers I catch sleeping as I lecture their obligation to the Constitution in general, and the First Amendment in particular. If you media folks wanna stop-by for a lesson yourselves (and damn, you sure could use it), come sit in on my classes. Of course, the same staff rules apply to y’all just like the military, little buddy, ‘cause Captain May sez y’all could use a little wake-up tap, too.

Captain May

PS: Toro! Toro! Toro!

Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4