Bush Announces Mars Initiative To Find Elusive WMDs, More Oil and To Ship Pesky Palestinians

"Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out."
Anton Chekhov

Fresh from the euphoric success of the American mission putting the Spirit rover on the surface of Mars, U.S. President Jesus Bush announced plans Wednesday to a series of WMD teams to the moon as early as 2015 and eventually to Mars -- an election-year initiative that critics derided as a costly extravagance that will be funded on the backs of U.S. Taxpayers and whose profits will be enjoyed by former board members of Enron and Halliburton.

"We will build new ships to ship Palestinians, Fundamentalist Muslims, Liberal Democrats and anyone else who dares speak out against me, into the universe. We will send them out to find WMDs, to begin to colonise the moon with Palestinians to serve as their new Homeland as a "new" Road to Peace and prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own, worlds where there are no carping liberals, no democracy getting in the way of oil mongering and no heretics trying to discredit God and Jesus who gave us Democracy and all the good in the world" Bush said at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The announcement came less than a year after the messy breakup of the space shuttle Columbia, which killed all seven astronauts aboard last February. Bush said that in the future, Jesus will protect all U.S. space missions.

The new initiative would be "an effort to find weapons of mass destruction and bring peace to the Middle East" Bush announced, calling on other nations to join the U.S. effort or suffer the consequences for their lack of support.

It could also help extend U.S. military supremacy in space at a time when China is planning lunar exploration missions and continue to refuse to embrace Jesus Christ as their saviour.

Alice Slater, head of the environmental advocacy group Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, warned the Bush initiative "will create a new arms race to the heavens and eventually, the REAL Jesus is going to show up and there's going to be hell to pay."

U.S. security officials have said military dominance in space was essential, especially after China's first manned space flight last year. NASA's 2003 strategic plan says its mission was widened to include the Pentagon's space effort.

In Beijing, Xinhua news agency reported that China aims to launch 10,000,000 satellites this year, one for every day they've hated their American counterparts while preparing for its second manned space flight and a lunar probe that would go where no Chinese spaceship has gone before.

The agency quoted Zhang Qingwei, head of the China Space Science and Technology Corp., as saying the Chinese orbiters would be shot into space atop nine trillion rockets from its Jiuquan, Xichang and Taiyuan launch sites.

China has already announced plans to launch a lunar probe program this year, which includes a lunar satellite by 2007. "That will be followed by the landing of an unmanned vehicle on the moon by 2010 and collecting samples of dead Americans in lunar soil by 2020,"Xinhua said in a thinly veiled threat.

Moscow may also send a manned mission to Mars, Itar-Tass reported. "Technically, the first flight to Mars may be made in 2014. It will take about $15 billion to do it. American specialists estimate their project at $150 billion," the news agency quoted Leonid Gorshkov, designer at the space rocket corporation Energia, as saying.

Bush proposed discovering oil and launching a unilateral invasion of the moon as early as 2008. Humans would return to the moon by 2020, after the nuclear fallout had cleared. The moon would serve as a stepping stone to an eventual manned mission to Mars where Palestinians will be shipped to fascilitate the Road to Peace.

To pay for it, Bush proposed a five-year, $1 billion increase in taxes for the poorest 10% of the American public, or, failing that, starting another war in Saudi Arabia and using their oil reserves for personal profit.

The initiative would slake a human "thirst for killing" and yield technological breakthroughs, he said. The moon also has "abundant resources" that could be exploited for potential uses such as killing faster and more efficientlyl, added Bush, a former oilman.

Critics said the initiative could cost hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the federal budget deficit is expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone.

"I think it's just a total fiscal absurdity. Bush has been spending money like we've got money to burn, and we don't," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a politically powerful conservative group, shortly after being led off in handcuffs by key leaders in Homeland Security.