Sunday, April 11, 2004

Pope George the 43d

4/11/04

Pope George the 43rd & President Loop de Loop

After listening to Condi Rice explain to the 9/11 Commission why W and Dick and Rummy and Wolfy and cru are responsible for nothing, NOTHING, that has gone wrong in this country and world pre and post 9/11, I had a revelation. Our Putative President is NOT President.

Now I used to think he wasn’t President because he stole the election. And I also used to think he wasn’t President because his Vice President was really running things and was therefore the de facto President. And then sometimes I’d think George wasn’t President because he is always on vacation, even when the chatter of terrorists planning to blow us up is SHRIEKING over the eavesdropped cell phone lines. But after Condi went before the 9/11 Commission and said that the whole problem was systemic and not the fault of the White House I thought that George isn’t really President because he doesn’t really preside over anything because he and his spokeslady are constitutionally incapable of taking responsibility for anything. He’s more like a pope, Pope George the 43rd, than a president, because he invests himself with a kind of papal infallibility. And he’s infallible because he doesn’t really DECIDE anything. He lets go and lets God…..or Dick….decide. The buck doesn’t really stop at his desk.

And then I wondered: Where DOES the buck stop?

Well, I have learned that George handed the anti-terrorism job to Dick Cheney back in May 2001, so maybe the buck stops in the bunker. But in the Spring of 2001, Dick Cheney had lots of things, like squaring the nation’s Energy Policy with Ken Lay’s dictates, and drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness, and dreaming of attacking Iraq, and starting up another Starwars boondoggle, which took precedence over fighting Al Qaeda, which was far down on his to-do list, so fighting Al Qaeda just didn’t get done prior to 9/11. Anyway, we all know that the De Facto President who is the titular Vice President is never going to tell us WHAT he does down in that bunker or whom he does it with. So we’ll never be able to find out just how little he did to stop Al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. prior to 9/11. All we’ll ever know for sure is that whatever little bit he did do wasn’t enough because bin Laden’s boys succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and incinerated 3,000 innocents.

So it’s clear that the buck didn’t stop in the Oval Office prior to 9/11, and it didn’t stop in Crawford, Texas, but it just might have stopped in Dick’s bunker, but we’ll never know for sure because no one but Dick knows exactly WHAT happens in his bunker. Maybe the buck’s in the bunker, maybe it’s not.

All we really know for sure is that we got totally blindsided on 9/11 despite warnings from foreign and domestic intelligence agencies regarding terrorists inside the United States who were hoping to hijack planes and who were targeting prominent buildings in large American cities and who had already tried to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower.

Oh, wait a second. There IS something else we know. We know that everyone in the Bush Administration claims that nothing we could possibly have done could have stopped these terrorists. Nothing we, or rather, THEY, could have done would have stopped 9/11 from happening. So they’ll be damned if they’re gonna apologize for failing to stop the unstoppable.

Here’s a modest example of what they couldn’t possibly have done to stop Al Qaeda: if our President who is apparently not really President, but is more like a V.P., or Vacationing President, had gotten really alarmed by reports of Al Qaeda operatives within the United States, he might have told everybody in the government to shake all the trees and see if they could find some of these boys. He might have told the INS, and the FBI, to make finding and stopping these terrorists a major priority, the number one priority. And then the folks at the top of the FBI, including the FBI Director and Attorney General Ashcroft, might have told their underlings to listen really hard for reports about said Al Qaeda operatives. And then those underlings might have treated reports of Saudis taking flight training without learning how to take off or land with much greater respect. Because such reports were coming out of Phoenix, they were coming out of Minneapolis, they were coming out of Florida, and they could not manage to get past mid-level FBI bureaucrats, who had other, Ashcroftian, priorities.

And maybe if our President who is not really the guy with the desk where the buck stops had been more concerned about threats to our transportation system he would have involved Sec. of Transportation Norman Minetta in the pre-9/11 War on Terrorism. But poor Norman never got invited to any of the important and relevant cabinet meetings. He was out of the loop. As was the head of the FAA.

As was Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism czar. We know he was out of the loop on anti-terrorism because our Vice President, the Default President, who just may be the De Facto President but ain’t saying, has TOLD us Dick Clarke was out of the loop. So that must mean that maybe, just maybe, De Facto President Cheney was IN the loop, because how could he have known that Dick Clarke was OUT of the loop unless he, De Facto President, Default President, Shadow President, Embunkered President, President Behind the President Dick Cheney, knew where the loop was?

Of course, Embunkered President Cheney ain’t saying if he was IN the loop, or where the loop was or is, or if the loop is in his bunker, or if he IS the loop. Because that’s classified. And even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t share it with us because he’s not a sharing man. And he also isn’t sharing for our own good, for reasons of national security. Though if we, or Congress, FORCED him to say so he might admit what he has already implied, namely that he was in the pre-9/11 anti-terrorism loop, and that he was in his bunker prior to 9/11, and we could therefore deduce that the loop was in the bunker. But De Facto President Dick Cheney would never explicitly SAY, not even under questioning by a Congressional Committee, not even under duress, not even in a dress, where he was prior to 9/11 or where the loop was or whether he and the loop were in the same place or whether he and the loop were one and the same because that’s classified. Maybe Dick Cheney was and is the loop. Maybe he loops de loop and loops de lie in his bunker. Maybe he daily goes downright loopy deep down in that bunker of his. Maybe the loop is he and he is the loop and the bunker is the loop and he is the bunker and they are a Holy Trinity. But we can never know for sure because we are not in the loop and we are not classified, though the loop is classified and Dick is classified. So we will be forever outside the loop and outside the bunker, while Dick will be forever, or at least until November 2004, embunkered within the loop. We? Loopless. Loopless in Seattle, or Los Angeles, or even inside the Beltway. Dick? LoopFUL. He is the embodiment of loopitude, whether he’s inside or outside the Beltway---not that he’s saying or ever will say WHERE he is, was, or will be.

What this means is that Dick knows something, or lots of things, that we would like to know but will never get to know because he is Dick but we are not. Dick is Dick while we are DickLESS. And nothing we can ask about how the Twin Towers and the Pentagon got blown up matters because we are loopless and Dickless outside the loop while Dick is loopful and dickful inside the loop and maybe even IS the loop.

And nothing we can hope to learn or do about what went wrong prior to 9/11, or what went wrong in the run up to the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, or what is going wrong now in Iraq, can matter, because we don’t rate the truth because we are not inside the loop, we are not of the loop, we are not classified, we are not embunkered, we are not Dick. We are the Undick.

So who or what IS Dick? Dick is all that we are not and we are all that Dick is not. Dick is the Pope of Dickdom.

If President George isn’t really the President because he’s really the Vacationing President, or the Fundraising President, or the AWOL President, then is Dick the President? The President of the United Loops of Dickerica? He ain’t saying. Because that’s classified. If you have to ask, you don’t have a need to know. Only those in the know get to know, and they already know. You’d have to be enlooped and embunkered and emDicktified, a cardcarrying member of the Dickpublican Party and a citizen of the United Loops of Bunkerica, to know who’s really President. Then, enloopifed, classified, Dickterrified as you were, you’d get to know where the buck stops.

--FIN--