Administration Source Reveals Plan to End Suicide Bombings!

In the great tradition of courageous reporter and sycophant of war criminals, Bob Woodward, I have decided the only way to get the real dope on what is going on at the highest levels of the US Government is to cultivate a top ranking super inside totally secret source. I’m thrilled to report that after hours of painfully hard work on the DC holiday party circuit, I’ve done it. Don’t even think of asking me his/her identity, because I swear to take it to my grave or until a such time as he/she makes a publishing deal. For purposes of this and what I hope will be subsequent interviews, I will identify this source by the code name selected by him/her: Rear Entry.

I spoke to Rear Entry in the crawl space under the wine cellar of a noted restaurant somewhere on the eastern seaboard. Obviously I can’t tell you the name, but it gets over 24 points for food on the Zagat’s Survey, which I, personally, think is a bit high.

JP: The Bush Government really doesn’t seem to have a clue about what to do in Iraq. Do they have any plan other than carrying on with the obviously impossible mission of subduing the insurgency?

Rear Entry: There are, actually, a number of completely revolutionary plans being developed on the tactical level that many in the avant garde of Pentagon thinking are convinced will turn the tide, both militarily and in terms of world opinion.

JP: Really?

Rear Entry: Well, even I won’t give you the specific details. But they think they’ve found a solution to suicide bombings and other forms of asymmetrical warfare.

JP: Amazing. Like What?

Rear Entry: We’re going to make it more symmetrical. Some of our best intelligence indicates that while the bad guys undoubtedly enjoy killing innocent civilians in a secret sneaky way and blowing themselves up in the process so they can get to paradise and all those virgins, an idea is gaining currency that they might be induced to abandon these highly effective techniques if they had the option of using fighter bombers, tanks and other advanced weaponry like we do, which clearly seem to be ineffective.

JP: Wouldn’t that result in higher US casualties?

Rear Entry: Maybe in the short run, but we have little doubt that in a fair fight, our troops would take them out pretty quickly. They’d be playing our game. And internationally it would be a political bonanza, reversing the embarrassment of Iraq never having had any weapons of mass destruction. Now they’ll have them just like we do! What could be fairer than that?

JP: But where would they get them? Syria?

Rear Entry: Oh, no. They haven’t got good enough stuff and we wouldn’t have enough control. They’d get them from us. Through back channels, naturally. By the way, I was thinking I might like “Back Channel” better than “Rear Entry” for my code name. What do you think?

JP: Whatever you’d prefer.

Rear Entry. I just want it to be hotter than Deep Throat, you know?

JP: Of course.. Getting back to Weapons of Mass Destruction, one question that many people would like answered is: did President Bush and other top members of the administration actually believe that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of WMD, or were they deliberately lying?

Rear Entry: It’s hard to know what George Bush believes. He claims to believe that the Grand Canyon was created by a single flood, that the earth was literally created in six days, and that the earth will end in an apocalypse ushered in by spirits riding four horses, followed by the ascension to Heaven of those who have taken Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Now, is this just bad intelligence, or has the intelligence been manipulated? Hard to say. But is he lying when he says he believes this stuff? Who the hell knows?