Why We Fight II: An Ax of Evil

The Big Smokin’ Gun

This bogger has, as y’all must know if y’all’ve been paying attention even a teenyweeny bit, been given access to all the public and private papers and records of the Beloved Student Deferment Bravehawk on the condition that the bogger not share them with Congresspeople or the news media, who are therefore kindly requested not to read them. This extremely important memorandum outlined the plan for making possible and justifying war with Eye Wrack. Note that the Beloved had actually ordered it up in July, 2000, shortly after Mrs. Teasdale had designated him as successor to Rufus T. Firefly, who had utterly failed to realize all of his campaign promises to marry Mrs. Teasdale and therefoire had become Excess Baggage and Persona Ungrata.

S T O P

If you’re a Congressperson or a news medium, you must stop reading and close this bog immediately. If you fail to heed this fair warning, the Gugol boys and Yahoo!!!!!!!! will tell Beloved Braveheart on you.

M E M O R A N D U M

FROM: Candalabreeza Cruella de Vile, Ministrette of International Signal Sending and Administrix of Silly Strolling

TO: Beloved Student Deferment Bravehawk, The Real President

DATE: January 25, 2001

As per your assignment last July, I’ve found the casus belli for invading Iraq. I feel certain you’ll agree as soon as you’ve read the report from my source.

It’s contained in the investigative-reportage, tell-all book Fist of God, by Frederick Forsyth, which was published in 1994. I have the Corgi paperback version, published the same year and based, the cover blurbs informs me, on Foysyth’s “awe-inspiring research” and “his incomparable authority.” The book is all about the dangers of a remarkable Ax of Evil, a Weapon of Massive Destruction that is be delivered by a gun whose barrel is 156 metres in length and one metre in calibre. That’s a long barrel. It could fire a w.m.d. just about anywhere, maybe even to the moon, as Jules Verne suggested. I don’t see how we can face posterity and explain why we left such an ax of evil in the hands of such an evildoer, even if we had urged him and helped do all the evil he did in Eye Ran and then given him free rein to do all the evil he could against his own people.

Forsyth reveals exactly how and where Saddam and his Minions have hidden their Axes-of-Evil factories, stocks, raw materials, etc. Forsyth knows where they are, and, thanks to him, we do, too. On these grounds we can easily defend the invasion you so dearly desire. But we mustn’t tell anyone, in my view, where the w.’s d.m. are until we can hold them in our hands and present them to the world’s news media under a banner that reads “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” or maybe “SHIT HAPPENS.” Nosy bloodsuckers of the press may try to find out where these Axes of Evil are being fabricated and stored, but we’ll just tell them we have proof that we cannot share with them because the telling would compromise our secret sources, namely, Forsyth. It seems to me it would make sense to classify the book as Awful Secret and forbid anyone to read it or, for those who have read it, forbid them to mention it, discuss it, refer to it, acknowledge its existence, review it, think about it, or write a book report on it. We could easily identify everyone who had bought a copy or checked it out of the liberry. We could then issue each a Keep Securely Silent on Pain of Being Orangely Jumpsuited Letter outlining the stuff they are forbidden that they not do.

Forsyth has lots of advice about the diplomatic moves we should make leading up to the war. Most relevant to your purposes, he says Freedonia mustn’t give a damn about the hearts and minds of the International Community. But we should pretend to.

Below is his outline of the steps we should take by way of sending signals to the Civilized World. For security reasons, I think we should adopt his code words, viz.:

State Department instead of Ministry of International Signal Sending and Administration of Silly Sauntering ;

U.S.A. instead of Freedonia

British Allies instead of United Thingdom of Echolalia and Perfidia All Lies.

Saddam Hussein instead of Antichrist Evil Evil Incarnate Gases His Own People and Occasionally Other People’s People, Too.

Liberating Kuwait instead of changing the Eye Wrack regime.

Forsyth prefaces his recommended course of action / inaction by noting that Saddam [sic] has established “an awesome stock of Weapons of Mass Destruction, coupled with continuing plans for even more.” Here then, his recommendations (p. 234, if you can get a copy before we burn them all):

“U.S. [sick] policy [Forsyth writes], in alliance with our British Allies [sick], must therefore be dedicated to four goals:

“(a) Insofar as it is possible, covertly to present provocations and arguments to Saddam Hussein [sick sick] aimed at causing him to refuse to pull out of Kuwait [sickle].

“(b) To reject any compromise he may offer on as a bargaining counter for leaving Kuwait [tsik], thus removing the justification for our planned invasion and the destruction of his war machine.

“(c) To urge the United Nations [?] to pass without further procrastination the long-delayed Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing the Coalition [of the Wilful] Allies [All Lies] to begin the Air War as soon as they are ready.

“(d) To appear to welcome but in fact to frustrate any peace plan which might enable Iraq [sic] to escape unscathed from her [whaaa?] present dilemma [w.w.]. Clearly the U.N. Secretary-General, Paris, and Moscow [fictional orgs. and neds] are the principal dangers here, likely to propose at any time some naïve scheme capable of preventing what must be done. The public, of course, will continue to be assured of the opposite.”

Now look what happens with the following changes, from code words to right words:

(a) Substitute “disarm” for the final four words.

(b) Substitute “disarming” for “leaving Kuwait.”

(c) Substitute “whatever” for “678.”

(d) No change in this item.

These are his recommendations for a signal-sending push to get our war under weigh, and I concur in each and every one.

Lovingly Presented by

Your Humbly Obedient Servantess,

[signed] Candy-Wandy-Poo

Who? What? Bog Readers, and this means you, will want to know who these people are and what they’re talking about. There are two tools of non-pareil importance in following the history of the Bravehawk Conspiracy: “How We Talk,” a Bushmanese lexicon (category: “In Their Own Words”), and “Dramatis Personae,” a Registry of America’s Bushmen: The Harmful People (category: “Bravehawk’s Team”). Czech ‘em out.