Why stop at 935 when an election is just around the corner?

Dear George,

Just as the sight of crocuses peaking through the soiled snows of March are harbingers of spring, so is the dealing of the Terror Card the harbinger of another election cycle. Once again, you are trotting out the strategy that has kept you in office for so long: If you scare the chickens enough, they will vote for the fox.

It is a thing of beauty. First you create imaginary shadows, and then in every imaginary shadow you hide an imaginary terrorist skulking down Main Street America, ready to blow up the local soda shoppe where America’s clean-cut teenagers hang out.

Your Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell says it so, so it must be so. And we must believe it is so, and our faith must be perfect, untainted by doubt, because if our faith is not perfect and it we allow the 935 lies that led up to your Iraq enterprise plant to a seed of doubt in our minds, we may wonder if the next utterance that comes out of your administration’s collective mouth might not be lie number 936.

National Security demands perfect faith. Just as the Rapture shall come; so are droves of terrorists rowing across the Atlantic in route to Main Street.

Mike tells us it is so.

When he appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 5, he said, al-Qaeda was refining “the last key aspect of its ability to attack the U.S.” They are training westerners, Mike tells us. No doubt, they are home-grown terrorists recruited on the Web which is why the Web must be constantly monitored by NSA and why anyone wishing to use the Web must submit to a background check before being licensed to do so.

Mike said it, so it must be so.

Mike’s truisms underscore why it is so important that you have unlimited authority to plant surveillance cameras in every girl’s locker room in the country without any pesky judicial oversight. His truisms also underscore why we must go beyond water boarding, which is simply a variant of recreational swimming, and introduce the rack and the Spanish Boot. (Nothing loosens a terrorist’s tongue like the snap, crackle and pop of the bones in his feet being crushed.)

Of course, this means the CIA must have the administrative leeway to extract information from terrorists any old way it wants. Mike told the committee in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t authorize harsh tactics for the CIA, its agents simply would refuse to torture suspects and our national security would be breached.

Mikes testimony is the hot air that is inflating Sen. John McCain’s bid for the presidency. And it is giving John a real high. Already he has labeled the war on “Islamic” militants the key ideological struggle of this era.

The beauty of all this bullshit is that if anyone questions it, your minions accuse them of being “soft on terrorism” an accusation that has Democrats pissing their pants. And of course, the Democrats are so cowed they would never dare accuse you of spouting lies number 936, 937, 938, 939…∞.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones