Our lightning strike has brought on Saddam’s fall.
Where next now that we’ve sterilized Iraq?
Iran it seems is anxious to play ball,
Pyongyang is out because they might fight back.
Foul Libya’s been quiet for too long,
We’d need far too much time to build the case.
And China’s far too rich and far too strong,
So Syria is Terror’s brand new face.
We somehow left them out of Evil’s Axis,
An oversight, we promise - they’re the worst!
So war we will, whilst wildly cutting taxes,
Though butter’s nice it’s bombs that must come first.
Has ever an empire had such fiscal fun?
Why, not since Moscow, circa ‘91.
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27 comments
David
April 14, 2003 at 4:25 pm
1Hey Adam,
You’re all wet on this. The evildoers probably moved their arsenal next door to Syria because Geraldo and his gang of elite leftist cheese eating peacenicks gave away our intentions on the air.
OK, so let’s get Syria, and if they move the weapons, go after the criminal regime of Iran and if necessary clean up the Kingdom of Jordan, and then Lebenon.
Cyprus, heck we can take them too. Malta, 2 days worth if we do this right. Since France hasn’t been overly cooperative let’s just roll over them. Clean up their beaches and improve the quality of their films in one fell swoop.
Canada would be a breeze and finally let’s take out the commies in Berkley, and Madison and Chapel Hill.
Heck, we can even call this a nice German name just to thumb our nose at the Krauts.
Why not blitzkrieg?
CocaCola58204
April 14, 2003 at 6:38 pm
2Whoa… this reminds of the poem Bill Radka puts at the end of every Rewind. I hate to breaki t to you Adam, but I’ve been going out with other NPR weekly news satire programson the side. But I love Wait Wait, and I would love it more IF MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO WOULD STOP PLAYING MUSICAL CHAIRS WITH IT’S SLOT ON THE SHEDULE AND PREEMPTIING THE ONLY SLOT IT HAD LEFT WITH THE BBC WORLD SERVICE AT RIGHT THAT TIME! THEY RUN CAR TALK THEN THEY GO TO THE BEEB THEN THEY RUN A FINANCIAL PROGRAM!
Dee
April 14, 2003 at 7:57 pm
3It’s kinda like Randy Newman’s “Poitical Science,” only with a lute. Very well done, Adam.
Joshua Scholar
April 14, 2003 at 8:54 pm
4Or maybe we’re putting pressure on the states that fund terrorism. I guess people don’t want to stress that because most of the victims of Middle Eastern terrorism are Jews, and everyone knows that killing a Jew is a good thing.
Sara J
April 14, 2003 at 9:43 pm
5Joshua:
Is it terrorism when Israel bombs Gaza City and kills dozens of innocents?
If not, why not? If you concede such actions are not sanctioned by the Geneva conventions, why don’t we just invade Israel–who we all know has nukes, chemical and biological weapons–before we start picking on Syria.
Besides bombs and bulldozers, Israel has used gas on Palestinians. “Gassing their own people” if you buy their definition of their borders.
Of course, that makes US a “state that funds terrorism” and we can’t stomach that possibility, now can we?
Don
April 14, 2003 at 11:20 pm
6If the US is a “state that funds terrorism” then “we have met the enemy, and he is us”, to quote the wise Possum (emphasis mine).
adam
April 14, 2003 at 11:40 pm
7Joshua -
I’m not saying the US shouldn’t put pressure on nations that sponsor terrorism. I am merely once again marveling at the shortsighted ineptitude with which we do so. To wit:
1) Our ham-fisted diplomacy leading up to the present war has put us in a position where we (and Britain) are condemning Syria alone rather than with a broad coalition.
But even more ridiculously…
2) Less than a year ago Colin Powell gave high and unequivocal praise to Syria for their help in our war against Al Qaeda. He acknowledged that Syria had initiated and taken part in operations that “saved American lives.”
Considering this, a nuanced approach towards Syria is called for. And today’s bombast was anything but nuanced. It was a threat, pure and simple, which may garner us short -term concessions but takes unnecessary risks with our future and the future of our struggle against Al Qaeda.
Rana
April 15, 2003 at 12:08 am
8*sigh* I hate feeling like Adam’s nailed it, because what he nails is so darned depressing!
About the MPR business — I feel your pain, CC. I even wrote the station several annoyed emails on the subject, only to be fed a number of lines that are woefully easy to rebut, so my intelligence feels insulted on top of being deprived of Wait Wait. These include the ideas that Wait Wait gets bumped so often because it is in a prime spot, reflecting the high worth the station puts on the show; Wait Wait gets bumped “because this is a news station”; and Saturday is a better day for bumping because more people are listening then. So… then how do you explain the double airings of some shows and the lack of bumping during Jazz Image, the Next Big Thing, etc., all of which are much less “newsy” than Wait Wait? _I_ say that it is because Car Talk and PHC are the 900 lb gorillas, and the other shows are hot new favs or in house productions. ARARGH!
Okay, end of MPR rant… they’re generally good, but this one thing just IRKS me!
And now back to our regularly scheduled commentary on Adam’s blog…
KatieWise
April 15, 2003 at 12:13 am
9CocaCola58204:
THANK YOU! I’ve been thinking I’m losing my mind on the weekends, because I turn on Minnesota Public Radio at the time I last heard WaitWait and it isn’t there. Then I’ll be “channel surfing” on the stereo and catch the last 7 minutes of WaitWait at some new time. Next week, it ISN’T THERE. Thank god for the “play this week’s episode” feature on the WWDTM Website….
Joshua Scholar
April 15, 2003 at 1:28 am
10Sara J. the propaganda buroughs of 7 (it was
totalitarian states works full time to create lies obscuring the situation in the middle east. They are so cynical that they even turn children into combatants because pictures of their dead and maimed bodies are so effective.
Israel isn’t stupid enough to gas the Palestinians. And if they had ever decided to massacre, the entire population could have been wiped out in a week… Don’t be fooled.
Joshua Scholar
April 15, 2003 at 1:32 am
11Adam, I’m not convinced. I voted for Nader last time, but somehow I’d rather have the current people running my foriegn policy than you - I think they have a much better idea what they’re doing than you do. Sorry.
And Adam, promise me that you’ll never use “circa” in a lyric again. Don’t make me come over there.
adam
April 15, 2003 at 9:42 am
12“Israel isn’t stupid enough to gas the Palestinians.”
That’s what some of us ’round here were saying about Saddam w/r/t Americans. We were right, it seems. But this doesn’t make the US’s case against Iraq invalid. [Contrary to the seemingly unbreakable conservative stereotype about those opposed to the war, I did not think that military action should necessarily be ruled out, just that (nearly) unilateral action was and is a grave mistake.]
As for whether I’d be a better choice to lead America’s foreign policy than Bush’s people…. I wasn’t aware those were the choices, but I choose me. But I think the only people less qualified to lead, policy-wise, would’ve been a Nader administration. Lest we forget the extremity of pride and ignorance at the helm:
DiIulio. DiIulio. DiIulio.
David
April 15, 2003 at 12:00 pm
13Joshua,
Kind of hitting below the belt there, aren’t you bucko. No one is saying that “killing Jews is a good thing.” Quite the contrary, not killing Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Texans, cyclists, and all others is a very good thing. Maybe you should read recent history first, however, before supporting the current regime in our nation’s capital.
1. Mr. Reagan lifted the sanctions against Iraq as a terrorist state in 1986 because Saddam had a beef with Iran (our then sworn enemy). Products of mass destruction (PMD) began to flow their way.
2. King George II (the elder Bush) looked the other way and Saddam invaded Kuwait.
3. We won all of the battles but lost the war (because the good ole US of A doesn’t overthrow governments).
4. Current VP Cheney (then CEO of Halliburton) lobbied the “evil Clinton Administration” to lift the sanctions on Iraq in 1998.
etc. etc. etc.
This really is about oil. It’s sad that so many of ours, theirs and the British had to die.
John Isbell
April 15, 2003 at 2:19 pm
14“buroughs”? Oh, bureaus. Joshua writes that Israel hasn’t massacred Palestinians, because if they wanted to, they could kill all the Palestinians in a week. A startling idea. Anyone, not just someone Jewish, should know that it takes longer than a week to kill 2 million people (maybe unless you use nuclear weapons). There is, thank goodness, a difference between massacres and genocides. For instance, Sabra and Chatila is a massacre. You might ask Sharon about it. Palestinian and Israeli attacks on groups of schoolchildren are massacres, as well as being terrorist attacks. It occurs to me that this might be slightly unfair, if English isn’t your first language. I still find your genocide scenario repulsive.
Adam, this was a great sonnet, one of my favorite of your posts.
Joshua Scholar
April 15, 2003 at 4:21 pm
15You might as the Phalange (christian militants) about Sabra and Chatila since they were actually there DOING the massacring, unlike the Israelis who were no where to be found. I listened to interviews on Pacifica with a bunch of survivors and even though they blamed the official enemy every chance they got, they witness anything that implicated Israel.
Joshua Scholar
April 15, 2003 at 4:25 pm
16typo there - I meant:
I listened to interviews on Pacifica with a bunch of survivors and even though they blamed the official enemy every chance they got, they didn’t witness anything that implicated Israel.
DAvid: of course what other administrations did in the Middle East before sept 11 2001 was all about oil. Dah!!!
That’s not what this is about…
Paul
April 16, 2003 at 10:28 am
17Joshua, millions of people were murdered in camps and 50 years later you use it for juvenile rhetoric on a message board. You should be ashamed of yourself.
John Isbell
April 16, 2003 at 12:17 pm
18Sharon wasn’t in the camps at Sabra and Chatlia. He sent the Phalangists in, and waited. So no, I wouldn’t think the survivors saw any Israelis in there.
Joshua Scholar
April 17, 2003 at 6:11 am
19John do you have ANY evidence that Sharon had anything to do with the Phalangists’ massacre?
You say “Sharon sent them in” as though it was an established fact. Many would love to claim that this is an established fact - so the fact that this is claimed by Israel’s enemies means nothing, they have no history of honesty. Do you have any evidence?
Paul: That sounded like an attempt to misrepresent what I wrote. That’s silly, don’t you think people will scroll up and read for themselves?
Paul
April 17, 2003 at 8:52 am
20No misrepresentation at all. Scroll up yourself. I wasn’t the one who tried to score a cheap rhetorical point by falsely asserting that “everyone knows that killing a Jew is a good thing.” I’ll leave it to others to decide which of us is being silly.
Anonymous
April 18, 2003 at 1:08 pm
21You folks that listen to mpr should try opb.org
(Oregon Public Broadcasting) Wait, Wait is on at 11:00am (pacific time)
Rana
April 21, 2003 at 12:55 am
22Actually, if MPR shuts off the feed, I go online straight to the Wait Wait site (I’m _in_ Minnesota so I’d have to go online to get OPB — an extra step), but it’s not the same as getting it fresh off the air.
But they ran it in its regular spot yesterday, so I’m happy!
(Even though our beloved Adam wasn’t on this time.)
Anonymous
April 21, 2003 at 1:03 am
23Actually, you can go to www.opb.org and get streaming live radio (pacific time). and our radio schedules are the same from week to week.
Kate
April 21, 2003 at 1:58 am
24Does anyone know how to make Wait Wait play online from a Mac? It airs at 11 at night here, but I can’t get my fix any other way….
Anonymous
April 21, 2003 at 1:59 am
25Adam, can we get a melody for this? Something for the people to hum….
Elliott
April 21, 2003 at 4:05 am
26Mac’s can play wait wait with the real one audio player. it depends what system you are trying to play it with but you will have difficulty no matter what. when i try to download a show from the website (http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/), it downloads an icon that looks like a hard drive, if you double click the icon it thinks you want to copy it to the disc and is unable to do that (so don’t double click it). Just click once on the icon, go to “file” and drag down to the “open with” selection. At that point you can select real one player if you have it. This is the only way that I know how to get the show, but I use OS X 10.2.5. There might be some more elegant solutions out there and I hope someone could help both of us. What I want to know is why did they change the format at the show? just to screw with us?
Rana
April 21, 2003 at 1:02 pm
27I think that the new format is meant to work better. (But that’s what they always say…)
Another thing that I had to do (I’m running Mac OS 9-something and usually Netscape 4.7) and tweak with the applications preferences so that the new file is picked up by Real Audio and not some other program (I _think_ the new format is something called “Streaming Metafile” or “smil” — I believe NPR has some info on it on their help with audio files section). Real Audio should be running before you download. Before I did this the file wouldn’t download at all, or Real Audio was unable to read it.
It’s a vast conspiracy to make us upgrade and need more memory and buy more computers!
(Inspired by Adam’s brilliant effort)
Oh MPR, you are so cruel,
You take away our Wait Wait fools,
And give us the BBC.
Now the Brits are nice, that is true
And it’s good to know what all’s new
But why can’t we
Have both?
NPR gives us our show
At least if computers we know
If not we’re screwed.
New formats are offered on a plate
But they block our Wait Wait
And test our IQs.
I’m wroth!
(Yes, it needed a slant rhyme to work. I’m not in Adam’s class!)