Bush: U.S. Troops Will Leave Iraq If They Ask Nicely and Give Up Their Oil
President says he doesn't expect that request, though, wink wink

WASHINGTON - President Jesus Bush says Iraqi leaders chosen in next week’s election will want U.S. troops to stay even though they weren't invited in the first place, but the forces will be pulled out if the new government asks really nicely, like on their hands and knees, maybe with a little begging involved, maybe after being stripped naked and made to pile up all over each other and of course, signing over all the rights to the oil fields of Iraq, The New York Times reported Friday.

"I’ve heard the voices of Jesus and the Iraqi people in my head and they all say the same thing, that they want us to stay forever and ever after these elections, though you never know," Bush said cleverly in an interview with several elite members of the Killing For Jesus suicide squads already in place for the elections. "But it seems that most of the leadership there understands under extreme duress and extortion, that there will be a need for coalition troops at least until the Iraqis give us all their oil."

Asked whether the United States would pull its troops from Iraq at the request of a new government, Bush reiterated a position expressed by other administration officials: "Yes, absolutely. We don't want to be there, we don't want to GOVERN them, we just want their oil and maybe a few military bases. As soon as we have that, we're out of there."

There was, he said, "a certain realism among the (Iraqi) leadership, at least the ones I’ve talked to, that say, ‘Look we're scared everyone is going to kill us if you leave and if all you want is, you know, our national sovereinty, our future or whatever, well, you can have it if it means we get to stay in power..."

Iraqi forces needed not only more training and equipment and the backing of about a half million more American troops into the killing machine, which Bush called “the spine of any military capacity after accepting Jesus as your saviour."

The U.S. Army said Monday that at least 120,000 troops out of the 150,000 U.S. forces now in Iraq would stay for the next two years to train and fight with Iraqi forces against insurgents to make sure their puppet government stays in power for good, or, at least until another Iran-like religious revolution finally topples them.

It was important that "we make sure the Iraqi citizens view Jesus and the U.S. troops as helpers, not as occupiers," Bush said. "Jesus doesn't want to occupy anybody, see? He just wants your love and undying support." But he acknowledged that many saw the United States as an occupying force.

"Not everybody is smart enough to understand how much better life is once you stare your into a mirror after a night of serious drinking and realise that if only you embrace Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, you too can become President of the United States." Bush reminded. "To the extent that a coalition presence is viewed as an occupying force, well, it's just perception, just like the Romans perceived Jesus to be a threat and nailed him to that cross up there. If we can fool the Iraqi people, like we've fooled the majority of American people, to believe that my government has the best interests of the people in mind, well, the government really is not their government, and our government is their government and Jesus loves us all, basically," Bush continued, stammering for words and staring out into his audience with dead fish eyes.

Bush stopped short of endorsing the view of a growing number of Republicans that the sheer size of the American presence in Iraq made the violence worse by presenting insurgents with a large target, instead he thinks that they should allow the soldiers to pass out bibles and give the Iraqi people a chance. If they don't accept the bibles, the butt of a rifle works just as well.

Bush also said a proposal by British Poodle Number One Tony Blair to put calmer parts of Iraq entirely in the hands of Iraqi troops was “certainly one option,” but he told the newspaper he had not yet discussed the proposal with his favourite poodle.

"Let me put it this way," the President added, smirking. "I'm always happy to listen to what Tony Blair is saying so long as he is saying what I want to hear."

Yes Yes

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountians and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

Charles Bukowski

Also, here and here and here on the Beat Page. He's everywhere!

HAIL TO THE CREEP

Clap hands everyone! President Jesus Bush is back on track, fresh from holidays, cherubic hue to his terrorist-killing cheeks, ready to do the business for the American people once again.

As a demonstration of his gratitude for the support he has been regaled with, President Bush began the ceremonies of inauguration with the first annual Parade of the Abused and Humiliated Naked Iraqi Prisoners.

Thousands of naked Iraqi terrorists were frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue as a marching band played "Bring It On" in a folksy paen to the the goodness of democracy and Jesus Christ today whilst the World's Favourite President was officially coronated as new Emperial Ruler of All That Is Good And Destroyer of All That Is Bad.

The infallibility of the American Way was much on offer for onlookers today as a three day long Bible study continued and thousands of women fainted at the mere site of their beloved leader.

In commemoration of the goodness of the task at hand, the inaugural DICK CHENEY FOUNTAIN OF OIL officially replaced the water fountain currently in front of the White House whilst a chorus of monkees were able to sing "Gay Marriage Is Our Enemy" in order to save themselves from the annual Monkey Feast as they were chased around the White House lawn by surrogates of the Administration.

"This is more beautiful than the birth of my child!" gushed a recently lobotomised intern as she helped strip Iraqi prisoners for the parade. "I knew it was going to be fun, but I never imagined it would be THIS much fun!"

Trillions of people were on hand to hear President Jesus Bush tell them over and over again that their billions of tax dollars were doing the work of God.

"Praise Jesus and pass the missiles!" the President shouted with a bullhorn as he practiced a pyramid of male cheerleaders forming a giant Jesus Fish in the middle of Lafayette Park.

The celebration was punctuated with artificial fireworks meant to symbolise the triumph of first world over third world militias and the defeat of Muslims by Christians in the New World of Jesus-Loving.

"Americans will thank me," President Bush predicted as he shoved his two daughters into abortion clinics and yanked away their bottles of whiskey. "For making the world a better place to live in."

Bush's Unveils Secret Plan In War On Terror: Bible Study

WASHINGTON -- President Jesus Bush said Tuesday the United States needs better intelligence gathering to further gains in the so-called global war on terrorism and the best way to do that is bible study.

Intelligence agencies need to improve in one particular area, he said.

"Biblical intelligence, the ability to get recite verse and scripture, the ability tell our friends in the Muslim world the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ, the ability to love Jesus Christ as your saviour and of course to listen to what he says and understand it -- that is what the world needs more of," Bush said in an interview with CNN senior White House correspondent John King. "That, and of course, no more gay marriages because gay people destroy the fundamental values of Christianity and are as big an enemy to America as terrorists."

Lack of human intelligence has been blamed for the belief that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq before the war. Their presumed presence, which Jesus told the CIA about, was the stated rationale for the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, but the U.S. government recently abandoned efforts to find them after a series of biblical scholars and spiritual mediums were unable to come up with any solid leads and Jesus finally came out and admitted that the tricky Muslims had outsmarted him this round.

Bush noted that a group has been formed to determine what needs to be improved.

"Out of that crazy commission of liberal terrorist lovers -- coupled with the new national director of biblical intelligence, hopefully, this president and future presidents will get the best possible intelligence," he said. "Because sometimes we have to listen hard to what Jesus is telling us. Like now, as he tells us there are no weapons of mass destruction."

Bush said progress is being made against terrorist groups.

"Progress is when you are winning the war on terror. And we are winning. Look how many Muslim terrorists we've killed and look how few of us they've killed," he said, adding, "That's not to say al Qaeda isn't still a threat but it is to say, hey - look how many dead Muslims you've gotten for your billions of tax dollars."

Sham elections in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territory and those slated to be held January 30 in Iraq "will be a major blow to those who can't stand the thought of people being able to express themselves and determine the fate of a government," he said. "People like liberals and Democrats will have to learn that if democracy can work in third world cesspools like that, it MUST be working in this great nation of ours, whether they like it or not."

Hey, It's the Propagandists' Fault, Not Our Stupid Decisions

He acknowledged that U.S. popularity in the Muslim world is weak and blamed poor public relations, and the unwillingness of some people to embrace the love of Jesus Christ.

"The propagandists have done a better job of depicting America as a hateful place, a place wanting to impose our form of thought and our religion on people," he said.

"We're behind when it comes to killing people. Look, we Christians don't even have any suicide bombers yet. The truth about Jesus and America as a great tag team of justice for the world simply has to be told and all those terrorists and liberals are just going to have to listen or else we'll have to bomb them into listening."

Bush predicted that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, whom he has nominated to be secretary of state, "is going to work hard to finish the job of creating irreconcilable chaos in the Middle East and helping our friends in the defence contracting and oil business continue to reap ludicrous profits via the sacrifice of innocent American soldiers in Iraq."

Her work won't be easy, he predicted. He cited "some peoples' irrational misunderstanding of our mission of bringing love and Jesus with every bomb dropped on every civilian in Iraq."

But he predicted that, "when a Jesus-loving country emerges in Iraq, I think people will begin to see the wisdom of the policy."

PERFECTION

You take your average sunset and multiply it
by infatuation.
Why do you multiply it
by infatuation rather than divide it?

Because dividing it makes it love.
And what we seek,
in the beginning,
is perfection.

The other might be too slow.
This moment can be 1965 and one thousand couples.
And they've already had their romance, their love,
their kids.
How slow is that?

How many of you are still fighting the war
for perfection when one moment
is all it takes?

Love is forever
until one half dies.
Perfection is the sentence no one
bothers to punctuate.


JAAP STIJL EXCLUSIEF

BUSH URGES DONORS NOT TO 'SHORTCHANGE' HALIBURTON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - President Jesus Bush pledged Monday that the United States would stay committed over the long term to helping the Asian nations recovering from the tsunami last month so long as everyone else paid for it, and he asked that Americans not let their contributions to the relief effort replace their charitable giving to Haliburton and other needy defence contractors that form an intricate part of the Administration's foreign policy.

In a speech to officials of the Agency for International Development and other relief groups, Mr. Bush said his administration recognized that the recovery from the disaster would take years. Is it really worth it? After all, the bottom line is, where's the oil in it for me?

"This is one of those projects that's not going to happen overnight, and probably isn't worth the trouble since alot of Moozlim turrists were killt in the tsunami" the president said in remarks at the Ronald Reagan Building near the White House. "We should be happy it wasn't us. God spared us because we are a Democratic nation and because we love him. The intense scrutiny may dissipate, and probably will, but our focus has got to stay on the killing that WE do, not the killing that God and Nature does."

But Mr. Bush, reacting to concerns from charitable groups that the outpouring of private aid to the tsunami victims might hurt donations to other relief efforts, asked Americans not to "shortchange" Halburton and other defence contractors just to feed a few of "those people over there".

"It is essential that your contribution not replace the ongoing contributions you're making to help our good friends the war profiteers," Mr. Bush said. "You should view the tsunami relief effort as something to do ONLY if you have given all the rest of your spare money to us to help us kill and help us wallow in blood and oil."

With more than $2 billion pledged to the Asian countries affected by the tsunami, senior officials at the World Bank and the United Nations said Monday that they are meeting with aid officials from wealthy governments this week to ask them not to forget the needs of the rest of the world.

"The aid for the tsunami victims has to be new, additional funds, absolutely," said James Adams, vice president of the World Bank, in a telephone interview. "But we have alot of people to kill and this crisis just takes the eye off the ball for the rest of us. It's time to move on and get back to focusing on killing terrorists."

*****
100 Things We Didn't Know This Time Last Year, courtesy of the BBC, the greatest blasphemers on television.

My top five:

In Heaven, There Is No Beer
#41. Twenty years ago, seven out of every 10 pints drunk in the UK were ale. Now, thanks to the rise of lager, stout and cider, the number is just three. Boooo. Too many tasteless drunken yobs are consuming...

A Toss or A Pint for lunch?
#63. Just one in a hundred workers goes to the pub for their lunch, according to a study. The same proportion spend lunch having sex. more.

Mini 9/11s
#76. More than one BILLION birds crash into buildings in the US every year. Mirrored office blocks are a particular hazard.

Stupid Holiday Drunk Tricks
#39. More Brits die each year falling from their hotel balcony than do in diving accidents, according to Foreign Office statistics.

Gimme More
#18. There are 75 withdrawals from cash machines every second in the UK. (how many are actually legal withdrawls?) more.

*****

In case you were wondering, Houston is the Fattest City in America.

Krazy Kim Strikes Again
"People who wear other's style of dress and live in other's style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin." --Nodong Sinmun newspaper

You have to give General Kim Jong Il credit, not even the Christian nutters that litter the ideology of the Bush Administration have spoken out against long hair yet, but North Korea, having discovered the enemy within, are now making an effort to kill it.

That enemy is bad haircuts.

Pyongyang television started the campaign against long hair last autumn with a five-part series in its regular TV Common Sense programme.

The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to cover balding.

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.

Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

The North Korean Barbers Union is said to be ecstatic.

*****

Someone with FAR too much free time on their hands decided to dial the infamous 867-5309 number of "Jenny" using all the area codes of America. via Fimoculous

*****

Fancy yourself a linguist? Have a go at reading the News in Spanglés via the ever-enticing growabrain.

*****

Happy to find yet another confrère in the War on Celine Dion. The Best Page In the Universe says: "I didn't think it was possible for me to hate Celine Dion anymore than I already did until I saw the cover of her newest album and accompanying calendar for the modern "grrrl power" super-bitch who finds solace in Dion's brash self-righteous smuggery. Alas, I used some restraint and narrowed the list down to eleven."

Here they are:

*****

Religious Nutters Spring From Their Pods In England

Bad enough that the anti-Evolutionist, pickup-driving, white-hood-wearing, anti-sex-and-nudity-spewing, Bush-loving, gay-bashing, freedom-of-speech-defying, hate-mongering right wing lunatic fringe of Christians have destroyed America, now their filthy tentacles have wriggled their way into the BBC as they piss and moan about the BBC's screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera offending their fragile little religious sensibilities with a little sex, foul language and blasphemy.

Of course, as is the case with all religious freaks, it wasn't sufficient to simply exorcise a little democratic privilege of protest, they deemed it necessary to threaten BBC staff as well for good measure. What's next Fatwas for Jesus?

A BBC spokesman has told Reuters "BBC staff and their families have received a significant number of abusive and threatening telephone calls, some of which have been reported to the police as criminal matters."

Numerous calls were made to top executives and some were answered by their children. The corporation is now intercepting the calls before they reach the excutives homes.

The more rational and freedom of speech-loving National Secular Society defended the BBC's right to screen the programme, urging the BBC not to give in to "religious bullies".

Vice-president Terry Sanderson said: "This organised attack is the latest of a series of attempts by religious interests to control what we can see or say in this country."

Desultory Turgescence believes that all fundamentalists of all religious denominations should be beheaded. That way they won't have to hear or see any offensive images or words ever again and their delicate sensitivities won't be violated any more.

Praise Jesus.

Beer Bottle

In the burned-
out highway
ditch the throw-

away beer
bottle lands
standing up

unbroken,
like a cat
thrown off

of a roof
to kill it,
landing hard

and dazzled
in the sun,
right side up;

sort of a
miracle.



--Ted Kooser. Current Poet Laureate of the United States, from: *Sure Signs: New & Selected Poems*. U Pittsburgh.

Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM DESULTORY TURGESCENCE!

2,000 Dead Swedes Can't Be Wrong

Westboro Baptist Church, made famous for their picketing of the funeral of Mathew Shepard, the young college student brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998, have issued a flyer which Thanks God for the Tsunami and 2,000 Dead Swedes.

Apparently, the motivation is in believing the 2000 dead Swedes were all gay vacationers and all deserved the wrath of God for being gay.

*****

if you're curious, this is what 135,000 dead look like, via growabrain

*****

Perhaps in deference of the certain deluge of vacationers, Bob's offers a Tsunami Suite. Just note there is "significant" air traffic noise and eroding beach. Otherwise, A-Ok.

And c'mon folks, it's not like this has never happened before. There's even a Tsunami Museum.

Be careful, Tsunami Bomb is loud.

Ahead of their time, Tsunami Addiction even has a spitting room.

Lost remote offers tsunami videos and assorted miscellania for those of you fascinated with those sorts of things.

*****

Poësie

Ok, had enough yet? Have your fill of tsanami this and tsunami that in your gob? If so, it's time to move on to the poetry kit to play with.

If not, well, sate the insatiable somewhere else.

In the meantime, chew this Sylvia Plath bone for the New Year:

New Year on Dartmoor

This is newness : every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you
Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There's no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat.

*****

Good news for the Ukraine! In case you missed it in watching the tsunami death toll rise or in calculating US Aid, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich resigned.

*****

Last o' the year Stuff:

My regular read, The Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha has a nice year-ending listing of his personal favourites.

Maud Newton provides the literarti the literary news and the The Literary Saloon provides The Year That Was.

50 Quid Bloke provides The musical year in review: very quickly.

Fimoculous is the ultimate list of Lists for 2004. Hours of unfettered fun.

Wonkette has a list of New Year's Resolutions of the Famous-for-DC.

Watching myself watching television watching television watching television, Radio Free Blogistan offers its Favourite Blogs of 2004.

Plenty of lists, just not enough hours in the day.

Best of luck in 2005 to readers and un-readers, writers, doers, and most importantly, lip synchers.