George and Tony's Excellent Little Gulf War

Early January, 2003:

"Alright folks, as you know, we here at Oxidental-Moronthaller Peaceful Solutions Consulting Resources won the $2.1 million secret contract from the Bush administration to dream up a pretext for starting a war with Iraq. You're my creative team, so let's make Oxi-Moron proud. Nerdman, what have you got?"

"Well sir, I think we need to get Saddam to attack one of our ships."

"Ships? Why a ship?"

"Because almost all of America's wars involved ships in some way. Like when American colonists tossed boxes of tea from a ship in Boston Harbor, or when..."

"But Iraq has a puny shoreline. Why would Saddam attack a ship? You got an idea on that, Warbanger?"

"Yes sir. We send in a phony hospital ship."

"Now whyinhell would Saddam attack a hospital ship?"

"Because it'll have a gigantic red cross on it, but it'll be a Crusader cross, and we'll name it the USS Holy War. But we'll tell the press it was a hospital ship. They'll buy it. They buy everything we tell 'em."

"...Then we went to war with the Barbary Pirates because they were attacking American merchant ships..."

"How can the Rakkis attack a ship? They don't even have any warships of their own."

"Maybe they could blow it up in the harbor like that... like that..."

"...Battleship Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor, which served as the politically correct excuse for war with Spain. But long before that, the War of 1812 got started because the British were boarding American ships on the high seas and impressing American sailors..."

"How did the Brits impress the Yanks, by dancing a jig for 'em?"

"No no, not impress. Impress. Took them off of American ships and pressed them into service on British ships..."

"Focus, people! It's not like we're a bunch of libertarians who need a legitimate self-defense reason to go to war. We need a political ploy! What's your proposal, Cleversham?"

"Like Nerdman says, we get the Rakkis to attack a ship. But we have to think modern. We know they have antiaircraft, right? So we send an airship over Baghdad. See, I have this brother-in-law over at Hot Airbag Advertising, and they have this blimp that they just used in a big food campaign, and it says on the side of it ... get this, now ... PORK – THE OTHER WHITE MEAT."

"And just howinhell do we run a coverup of that? Reporters aren't that dumb. And anyway, who would volunteer to pilot the damned thing?"

"...Then of course the sinking of the Lusitania with 159 American civilians on board helped get us into World War One..."

"We could use one of those pilotless spy planes. You know, a UAV. Hell, the Predator only costs around 4.5 million taxbucks anyway, so what if the Rakkis do shoot it down? See, we could have it buzzing around ol' Saddam's head and tell everyone that it's just a part of the UN sanctioned surveillance program but it'd keep hackin' off ol' Saddam until he ordered his Rakkis to shot it down just like the Japs... hey, Nerdman, what did the Japs do...?"

"They sank our Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor."

"Oh, well, whatever... until he shot it down and then Bush could tell the whole world that the Rakkis provoked us into a war."

"Hmmm. Waddaya think Nerdman?"

"Well sir, it worked for Lyndon Johnson when his people fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in which the US dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam by retaliating for an attack on one of our ships that never happened."

"Yeh boss, I think I read where that hoax was conjured up by the old Integrity and Sons PR firm of DC way back in 1964. Ira Integrity is a legend in our business."

"All I know, people, is that if we don't come up with a plausible pretext soon this job is gonna get outsourced to India."

NEWS ITEM:

"The Independent, UK, 3 February 2006 – George Bush considered provoking a war with Saddam Hussein's regime by flying a United States spyplane over Iraq bearing UN colours, enticing the Iraquis to take a shot at it, according to a leaked memo... The memo damningly suggests the decision to invade Iraq had already been made when Mr. Blair and the US President met in Washington on 31 January 2003 ... [Bush] had a date, 10 March, pencilled in for the start of military action. The war actually began on 20 March."