The Invasion Of Iraq

     The U.S. blasted into Iraq like gangbangers, baby! All that Shock and Awe shit...
     Zeep, excitement rekindled within him, hired three chippies, Foxy, Loxy, and Roxy, and partied!
     He managed between bouts to get a text out to the Zorkian legions parked on Alpha Centauri. He laid down three-to-one odds they'd be parked on the White House lawn by 2012.
     They texted back, stressing that he, as their hot-shit creep 'n peep man on the ground, had sure the fuck better be right...
     Eons later, buried deep in a salt mine somewhere on the Planet Fangolatula, Zeep could only dredge up the bitter ghost of a smile at the promises he'd made to Roxy, his favorite chippie of all, that never again would she have to work streets to stay well, that, rather, she'd be running her very own call operation, on George Bush's ranch down in Texas, with a trick list to die for: "Kissinger, Rumsfeld, Carlucci, DeLay, and all the big gongos, you know?"
     It was all supposed to be such a cakewalk! They'd bulldoze Iraq and knock off Saddam, then rip off the oil and pretend to the world the Iraqis all liked it! They'd get the job done in 12 minutes or so, then turn the place over to Rip 'Em And Clip 'Em, Dick Cheney's old contracting outfit, then head for Iran or some other rogue state that's not North Korea.
     Nobody'd get hurt but the bad guys. Iraqis would love the Americans dearly and renounce Muhammed or some fucking thing.
     Well, er, ah... It didn't go quite like that. Even all those years later, Zeep continued to muse in that salt mine on all of the stuff that FOX airbrushed from sight in those first crucial weeks of the war.
     March 2003: the U.S. slammed up the sand trail toward Baghdad and--bam! They'd thought the Iraqis would just go ass up but, well, no! The fuckers shot back! U.S. troops were getting knocked off! Supply lines were getting chewed up!
     Who the fuck wrote this script? Back in D.C., Rummy the Dummy was clearing his throat. Reporters asked him, hey, what the fuck? Rummy huffed, "Well, er, ah, no, we didn't say cakewalk. Look, trust us, we'll get 'em!"
     And by God they did! They went to Plan B: Bribe Saddam's generals. Sufian "The Dog" al Takriti was one. Agents went in with big bags of loot and resettlement offers. "Corona del Mar, some farm in Virginia, you name it, you got it!" Takriti said, "Yeah! Why fight the Big Dog?"
     Next thing you know, those crack Republican Guards, Saddam's asskicking fools, were dumped south of Baghdad with popguns to stop the invaders. Out in the desert, no cover, no nothing.
     What happened next was a duckshoot and that's all she wrote for Baghdad and Saddam Hussein. Takriti, meanwhile, fled down the ratline. The U.S. breezed into Baghdad, pulled down some statues, and called it a win. Bush dressed in a flight suit to look like a badass, then strutted in front of the cameras and crowed, "Mission accomplished!"
     Just goes to show, the dipstick was still smoking crack.
     Bush in that flight suit alone should have tipped Zeep that things would go south in a hurry.
     But those chippies! Foxy, Roxy, and Loxy, oh boy! Zeep thought he'd stay hard forever! Then too, he was slamming down brewskis a mile a minute and brew made him stupid.
     In May of '03 Paul Bremer bounced into Baghdad. This was the yutz that Bush named Head White Boy In Charge In Iraq For Awhile. The sucker arrived all decked out in a gray suit and stomp boots, with a raj hat stuck on his head that looked more like the rind of a muskmelon shagged from some dumpster. He carried a swagger stick too. He should have come dressed as Bozo the Clown.
     Zeep couldn't believe it! And then, what the ditz had to say in Baghdad's main public square on the first day he got there...
     "The Iraqi people are free! Democracy, baby! Brad, Angelina, Jennifer Lopez! Popcorn and crack hos! Line up at McDonald's and get fat as blowfish, like us! And then cast your votes to fork over your oil for nothing and--"
     An Iraqi came over and whispered in Bremer's left ear. Bremer just gaped at the guy. "Elections? Well, sure but--you wanna vote for those Shi-ites? You mean like those clerical guys like they've got in Iran? Listen, my friend, you can stick that Khomeini shit right up your ass! We've already got the guy picked! Yeah, Ahmad Chalabi, Rummy's old buddy and--Yeah, we know he's wanted for bank fraud, pimping, and drugs in Amman, but so what? It's him or some other ratsucking bandit, you got it?"
     Bremer turned back to the crowd. "Now, where was I? Oh yeah--democracy, baby, American style, and--Hey! What's that noise? Jesus Christ! They blew up the what? And the other one too?"
     He yelled at an aide. "Get our guys out there, man, quick! Search all the houses! Yeah, we know the troops were due to go home, but fuck that!"
     Shaken and mopping his forehead, Bremer looked wildly around. "Saddam is behind this!" he croaked. "It's gotta be him! The Iraqis all love us! Sure, we ransack their houses and shoot into crowds--but we give their kids candy! Tootsie Roll Pops! And--"
     Someone shouted a question.
     Bremer's eyes popped. "What's that, what's that? How does Saddam get the word out? How the fuck do I know? Secret codes, smoke signals, some fucking thing! It's gotta be him! Look at the Brits down in Basra, all those Shi-ites down there! No trouble whatever! The Brits are walking around in their shorts, for Chrissake, and--"
     Another shout from the crowd.
     Bremer looked shellshocked. "Six Brits were what? A crowd chased them into a building and what? The whole fucking town chased them in there? And--what's that? They're offing our guys every day now? Hit-and-runs, drive-bys, snipers on rooftops? Car bombs and--missiles? And--pipelines? They're blowing up pipelines?" Bremer almost fell off his perch. "Sweet Jesus in heaven, we've got a war on our hands!"
     No shit, Zeep mused. These clucks did indeed have a war on their hands.
     But Bush had sent Bremer in there with what he thought was an ace up his sleeve. Zeep had seen Bush stick it up there the night he sent the putz over.
     "Now, Paul, here's the deal. We're there in Iraq to win hearts and minds. First thing you do is get that sovereignty show on the road. We'll, uh, hand back the power to our guys, the stooges, and you can announce like an interim government soon to be formed. You know. Chalabi..."
     Zeep almost swallowed his gum. More of this honky-tonk, trick-'em and dick-'em! Was this Cheney's idea?
     Ahmad Chalabi! Talk about nitwit fandangos!
     Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's top Shia cleric, sat Bremer down to tell him the time.
     Zeep caught that one too. It went down in a bunker, Sistani looking at Bremer like Bremer was Alfred E. Neuman the whole fucking time. "Ahmad Chalabi? Why not John Gotti, you moron! Too bad he's dead, huh? Look, stupid, we want elections! And then, get your pimple ass on down the road! Either that or we ram that swagger stick right up your ass!"
     Zeep had to puke in the sink after that one. Why didn't Cheney just nuke these cocksuckers?
     Bremer, natch, didn't get it. In June of '03 he proclaimed that the U.S. would retain control of the Iraqi Army, and the oil and the pipelines, etc., after sovereignty passed back to Iraq.
     Bremer explained on FOX to dummies back home: "Security, dig it? We wanna go home and all that but--" He shrugged. "You know..."
     Then that December Bremer announced, no elections until after the U.S. held theirs next November.
     Bremer explained as he and an aide hunkered down in a bunker as shells blitzed and slammed all around them. "Jesus Christ, man! After Bush steals that one, maybe these assholes will get off my back!"
     Bremer kept sticking his foot up his ass. In March of '04 the fuckwad announced that the bases the U.S. was building--14 of the fuckers all over the country--were, well, for keeps. At a press conference held in a sewer somewhere, he picked at a zit on his cheek and explained once again: "Well, yeah, they're forever but, look at it this way. We'll need Iraqis to cook and clean up for our guys! It's a job program, think of it that way!"
     Zeep ralphed again, this time in his shoes. These guys could fuck up a trip to the beach! It had all looked so good at the start!
     It sure didn't now! Iraq put the boots to Paul Bremer's ass and its war to expel the rest of the bandits got going in earnest.
     The next months were sheer sawtoothed hell.
     Fallujah. Those two charred chunks of meat the insurgents hung from that bridge.
     Then, Mosul, the oil-rich northern city contested by Arabs and Kurds, went ka-boom.
     Then Baghdad, Najaf, Nasiriyaa, and Kut. They all went boom boom boom boom. And these cities' insurgents were Shias, the people who, Rummy had said, would love us for brooming Saddam. They were led by Muqtada al-Sadr, Sistani's chief political rival.
     Shias, man, damn! Yeah, hugs and kisses--like they didn't know the U.S. came in to pick Iraq clean as a bone?
     So, Iraq in '04--right up Bremer's ass. Some swagger stick, huh?
     Bush flipped a coin: shit or go blind?
     Then Cheney slapped him and shoved him back out to explain that the war was, well, going great!
     Sure! Going great! Look at Najaf. That fight to the death in the graveyard...
     But hey, the U.S. prevailed, did it not?
     Oh hell yeah, they won. And Sadr chilled out--for fights down the road. You notice his guys kept their guns.
     The post-Najaf press conference: Bush sat on a stool, wearing a dunce cap and slurping a chocolate ice cream cone.
     "The war's going great!"
     Then he fell off his stool.
     Zeep cried that night for the very first time since he got here.
     Sistani, in contradistinction, was happy as pigs in the popcorn. See what the Shias can do, George? Now, those elections. Better get cracking, my man!
     Bush, though, was dumber than Bremer. He figured that, after the graveyard, the U.S. had it all dicked. The Shi-ites are out of the way! Let's get those Sunnis!
     The U.S. went back and destroyed Fallujah. Bush spritzed in his pants. That was the ballgame for those fuckers, right?
     Well er, ah, no.
     In the Sunni Triangle now, U.S. troops would kill 20--and hundreds would pick up a gun and join the insurgents. Thousands more Arabs streamed through the border to fight. The Triangle became a day-to-day death trap for U.S. GIs and Marines.
     Morale hit the skids. The troops were getting their asses picked off. Two, four, ten, sometimes 20 a day damn near every day, on and on. Part of the problem: the Pentagon shorted the soldiers on good stuff like armor, then told them to scavenge the dumps for tin cans.
     The generals were sweating. Our forces, stretched thin! Then Bush told the troops, soon as your tour's up, surprise! You get to stay in Iraq!
      "Hey, guys," dumbfuck said, "it's like Nike or something, you know, like, just do it!" He grinned and shrugged as the ice cream dripped on his suit.
     In June of '04, in a basement somewhere with paper bags over their heads, U.S. officials handed the sovereignty over to guys they'd picked out from Baghdad's back alleys, most likely winos. Then they slunk back to their compound, turned on the TV, and goggled as Bush blathered on about all the wonderful progress so far. Again, he sat on a stool with the dunce cap and ice cream, picking his nose and flicking the boogers at CNN's Blitzer.
     "The war's going great!"
     This time he managed to stay on his stool but the ice cream dropped off the cone to the floor. Just for a moment he looked like he wanted to get down off the stool and lick it right up.
     You can bet that by this time Zeep had the deep, deep, deep blues.
     Meanwhile, the pressure was getting to Cheney and Rummy as well.
     Cheney decided to take a vacation. Reporters caught him dressed to go hunting and cradling a shotgun. Seeing as he'd just stepped out of the White House, he looked like a stone fucking dipshit. Imagine Elmer Fudd as a serial killer...
     Cheney leveled the shotgun at the reporters. "The insurgency's just a blip in the road, goddamnit. Now get outta my way, I've got a date with some ducks."
     Lawyers he'd scammed with for decades and decades all fled for the tall grass like rats at this news.
     In his office, meanwhile, Rummy played flak-catching goat. He fired up the crack pipe. "Here, you guys want some? Good shit..."
     Powell faced the nation wearing the same paper bag that he'd worn at the UN General Assembly. "Well, er, ah, geez, guys," he said, "what can I tell you. That UN thing? Sure looked like anthrax to me!"
     A reporter asked, "What about WMDs? You found any yet?"
     "Uh, WMDs? Well, no, we haven't. Does that make your week?"
     "But, sir--"
     "Yeah, yeah, I know. Those Pez dispensers lying around at that one place last week. The guy said it was nerve gas! How were we supposed to know?"
     "Who was this source, sir?"
     "A friend of Chalabi's. Said he'd worked at their nuke plant or something."
     The reporter sneered. "A friend of Chalbi's. An Iraqi, uh, patriot, right?"
     "Very funny," Powell snapped. "We--"
     "Mr. Powell, did this, uh, patriot receive any recompense for this information?"
     "Well...we paid the guy, yes. He needed a loan to get out of the country. We're trying to help there and--"
     "Sir?"
     "What do you want now?"
     "Where does the WMD search go from here?"
     "Well, er, ah... We keep looking, I guess." Powell tugged at the bag on his head, pulling the sweat-dripping eyeholes away from his eyes. "Look, fellas, that's it, okay? I gotta run. Therapy appointment at three, I gotta go now..."
     Powell stumbled out of the room.
     Meanwhile, the hunt for Osama bin Laden proceeded apace.
     Bush, in his dunce cap, updated reporters. "Osama bin Laden?" He looked around for his cue cards.
     A reporter shouted, "Where's he at?"
     "Where's he at? How the fuck do I know? Maybe at my dad's place... They used to like to play cards and kick it in Jedda... Don't worry, guys, we'll get him!
     Aides rushed in from the side of the stage, threw a blanket over Bush, and dragged him away.
     Osama loved it! He whipped out a new vid that night.
     "Playing cards with your Daddy? Hey, George, the punk owes me money from last time!"
     Zeep, watching this shit, thought about scragging the mission right then and there, then jetting at warp speed to Sirius Sector and going for bush in some backwater there. They'd never find him! He'd take Roxy with him! She had cherries tattooed on her ass and liked to sit on his face for like hours!
     He could open a grog shop down on the flats where the dust rats came through, and get fat and grow old in the sun...