Word of the Day
Pharaoh
Middle English Pharao, from Late Latin Phara, from Greek, from Hebrew par‘, from Egyptian
pr-‘' : pr, house + ‘', great.]...meaning a King of Egypt or, a tyrant

HE'S BAAAAACK

Just when you thought it was safe to ride the subways, take a ferry, travel on an oil tanker and hang out at tourist traps frequented by camera-toting Americans, Osama Bin Laden re-emerged Tuesday in a tape played by Al Jazeera whose highlights included a threat that it was time to "get even", sandwiched between old time classics like "you will be killed just as you kill" and "expect more that will further distress you".

He further claimed, perhaps in a bold attempt to steal the limelight from Time Magazine's Person of The Year award, that our one and only President Bush was the "Pharaoh of the Age", as in "I'll take Pharaohs for 200 Alex". Our Secretary of Defense, The Donald Rumsfeld, Osama chose to name "the butcher of Vietnam".

No doubt, the failed Democratic party could have stood to learn a thing or two from Osama's Dictionary of Defamatory Phrases and applied them to some of the leading Republican candidates during the recent elections. Just imagine Fritz Mondale calling Norm Coleman the "Pharaoh of the 10,000 Lakes" or Trent Lott getting dubbed "The Mother of All Mississippians"...it has a nice ring no doubt and this sort of hyperbolistic gum chewing is one of the few benefits we can always expect when things start heating up in the Middle East. Doesn't anyone remember the humorous bilge coming out of Baghdad over the years, the ridiculously defiant fish stories and stultiloquies?

Just to test the accuracy of Osama's analogies, I looked up who was the butcher of Vietnam, and found out that it wasn't ole Rummy at all. Apparently, Osama has confused him with Kissinger who was not only the butcher of Vietnam, but also of Cambodia, Chile and East Timor. It might have lessened the strength of Osama's vituperative to refer to a man so long out of touch with killing, but for the sake of accuracy, he should have found a new nickname for Rumsfeld. Maybe he can borrow a little Carl Sandburg and call Rummy the "Hog Butcher for the World". That ought to satisfy his fellow Islamacists and their Great Fear of the dreaded pork product.