Iraq to Become 51st State

April 22, 2003. A spokesman for the Bush White House revealed plans today to make Iraq the 51st state in the union once colonization operations have been completed. Other officials involved in the war on and reconstruction of Iraq were available to the press for comment.

“This is just wonderful,” grinned Jay Garner, noted weapons dealer and non-expert in Mideast affairs. “When King George [Bush] annointed me His Majesty's Royal Viceroy to America's latest colony, I couldn't have been more thrilled. What a great venture to hawk my wares and make a few more bucks. But this—this really takes the biscuit! Hang on, folks, it's gonna be a helluva bitchin' ride!”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld added his thoughts: “Yes, the colonization of America's 51st state is well underway and proceeding to everyone's satisfaction. Our representatives from AT&T, MPAA, RIAA, and other stalwarts of American industry are already over there in the rugged, uncivilized desert nation, establishing the new law of the land to protect the rights of vulnerable American big business. Before we're through, Americans will be able to sleep better at night knowing that each and every Iraqi knows that pirating software or music will cost him or her a hand, a foot, or an eye. Or, maybe we'll just cut offenders' tongues out. Whatever, it's gonna be a lot of fun.”

These remarks were amplified by Dick Cheney: “In addition to freeing the Iraqi people by imposing repressive new laws to protect American business interests from having to contribute to the welfare of these foreign scum, we are also over there rewriting Iraqi schoolchildren's textbooks so that every brown little boy or girl learns of American superiority in all things civilized, like making money and waging war. American missionaries are already in the schools teaching these poor ignorant children to sing songs of praise to George Bush and boo and make raspberry noises about Saddam Hussein. Soon, every Iraqi voice will be raised in hatred of that odious creature. By reeducating the children, these brave missionaries are also striving to undo decades of social damage caused by allowing women to pursue careers of their own choice or to have any say whatsoever about their own lives or destinies. And God forbid any child ever hears of such a thing as birth control or—ugh!—abortion. We are also making sure that these little urchins learn their science properly—not only are American big businesses desperate to stifle all new technology developments unless instigated by themselves, but the President would positively pitch a hissy if any of those stupid, sniveling brats learned evolution instead of creation science by mistake. Yes, Iraq as the newest state will become a veritable model of statehood all over our great republic.”

Meanwhile, not everybody is equally thrilled with these developments. Puerto Rico is furious with being passed over for statehood and its privileges, as is the “taxation without representation” District of Columbia. “I guess that's what we get for not having the second largest oil reserves in the world,” harrumphed D.C. mayor Anthony Williams derisively.

Dissenter Zoe Owens, Ph.D. philosopher and author of such introspectively religious books as “Jesus Holy Christ Almighty,” snorted in obvious disgust at these goings on. “America is reliving the Reagan era but with a bizarre fundamentalist Christian, evil twist. Remember Libya? It too was a small, defenseless yet strategically important country, so Reagan falsely proclaimed it a grave threat to the U.S.—according to the propaganda of the day, all those evil Libyans wanted nothing more than to see every American dead—and attacked it. And that attack had no more to do with deposing dictators or freeing helpless populations than this attack on Iraq. After all, America loves dictators—it supports and trains them whenever it can, just as long as they continue to cooperate with the American government. Remember Manuel Noriega? He was a vicious, murderous tyrant. Yet his personnel were armed and trained at the then School of the Americas—which has been renamed and moved due to public outcry—to torture and kill those who didn't cooperate with them, all facilitated by the U.S. government at American taxpayer expense. Noriega was allowed to rule until he failed to satisfy U.S. government demands and thus was deposed by U.S. invasion. Romania's Nicoli Tchaichesku was also a vicious, murderous despot—arguably on a par with Saddam Hussein. Yet the United States supported him and recognized him as leader of Romania until the moment the Romanian people overthrew him. Some say that the only reason that the Iraqis never overthrew Saddam Hussein is that they were too crippled by U.S. sanctions—sanctions that actually made Saddam stronger by weakening the population of Iraq and forcing the people to rely on him for their every need from food to electricity to clean water. If that's true, then the American invasion of Iraq—which was needless at best—is truly sickening beyond comprehension.

“The degree of complicity in this reprehensible invasion—and colonization—is also sickening. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Wolfowitz—each is so intimately, interchangeably involved that it matters not who's responsible for what aspect of this travesty of democracy at America's expense. They are all merely fingers of the same evil, destructive hand.”