Monday, May 10, 2004
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President,
How do you think of this stuff? You must be a genius!
Rush Limbaugh tipped me off that the torture and humiliation and murder of prisoners in Abu Ghraib were all your idea because you wanted to have a little “frat house fun” like the good old days in Skull and Bones. That makes sense, but you must have known you’d take some heat if the pictures got out. And then it hit me between the eyes! You wanted those pictures to come out! Have you noticed:
--Since the pictures came out, there has not been one--not one!--mention of WMD(s) on any newsbroadcast.
--Since the pictures came out, the 9/11 Commission has fallen off the map! Not one word about you being “asleep at the switch.”
--Who’s Dick Clarke? Isn’t he the guy who said something bad about how you handled 9/11 and then Condi Rice and Dick Cheney said he was wrong? Or maybe he’s the guy who used to be on American Bandstand.
--Now that the pictures are out, gas prices will go down this summer and everybody will forget about the deal you made with Saudi Prince Bandar and everybody will be so happy and grateful to you! Surprise, surprise!
--Osama bin who?
--I thought people would be talking about Bob Woodward’s book from now until November. Silly me. People are too busy looking at those pictures. And waiting for the video.
--What did Woodward say, anyway? I don’t remember. Something about your secret plans to invade Iraq starting two weeks after you invaded Afghanistan, and Cheney was in there somewhere too--I think he was the “higher father”--and then Cheney and Powell weren’t talking to each other for some reason--or was that Rumsfeld? And wasn’t there something about the Saudis knowing about your secret attack plans before your Secretary of State? Something like that.
--Whatever happened in Fallujah? Something about dead U.S. servicemen being dragged around in the streets and we were going to get Al Sadr for it, only when we went in, the Iraqis started shooting back so we had to retreat, only we couldn’t call it a “retreat”--it was a “strategic withdrawal,” but we still had the city contained and we turned it over to Saddam’s army. Who cares?
--How many Americans are dead now? I know it was in the 700’s when Koppel did his show where he showed every American soldier killed in action except some Clear Channel stations wouldn’t air it and everybody was upset for a day, and then those Abu Ghraib pictures came out and we all lost count.
--You say the stock market is below 10,000 again? Pass the pictures.
--When did you say you were going to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis? Did I hear something about the “road map” to Israeli/Palestinian peace being postponed? What about the Cheney energy hearings? Have Cheney and Scalia been duck hunting lately?
--What about No Child Left Behind--are they all caught up yet? What about Clean Air? Clear Water? Healthy Forests? Mutant Salmon? I just can’t keep track. I get so distracted by those pictures.
--Remember all those books? Not Michael Moore and Al Franken and Greg Palast and Molly Ivins. We know what they’re going to say? I just seem to remember a bunch of Republicans like Woodward and O’Neill and John Dean and Kevin Phillips and Craig Unger and Joseph Wilson--speaking of Joseph Wilson, did anybody ever figure out who in your administration outed his wife, the CIA spy?
--Speaking of books, are you going to come out with a coffee table edition of “Pictures from Abu Ghraib?” You could sell it as a fund raiser for the Republican Party. That and the video. Then watch the campaign money roll in!
Anyway, yesterday I heard you say Rumsfeld was doing a “superb job.” And he is! Especially if it was his idea to circulate the pictures. That was brilliant! It helped us take our minds off things. Also, he did a good job of leveling Baghdad. He did a “superb job” of that too.
Sincerely,
Carl Estrada