[Newspoetry] My Dinner With Ari

[gillespie william k]

My Dinner With Ari - has anyone used that title yet? If not, I would like
to use it. If so, I would like to use it anyway.


My Dinner With Ari


It is the second day of damage control for the White House after the
airliner of accusations of at best incompetent intelligence gathering
collided with the tower of the president's bid for credibility. Though the
president's approval rating, as ascertained by Time magazine's poll of 50
Republican oil company executives, remains high.


Newspoetry went to the White House to get the inside scoop.


NewsPoetry: So, guys, how about releasing some documents and facilitating
an investigation whose outcome might help prevent future terrorist
attacks?


Ari Fleischer: A broader probe into administration actions before
September 11 could lead to a breach of national security, compromising the
war on terrorism.


NewsPoetry: The American people have every right to compromise Bush's war
on terrorism, since we're funding it and fighting it. Anyway, the goal of
the probe into the failure to prevent the terrorist attacks is to
compromise terrorism, not war. Although, admittedly, capturing terrorists
before they attack might compromise a war on terrorism, the same way
penicillin might compromise pneumonia.


Ari Fleischer: Such an inquiry could become a fishing expedition or
another endless waste of taxpayer money in an open-ended congressional
investigation.


NewsPoetry: The war on terrorism could become a fishing expedition and
another endless waste of taxpayer money in an open-ended military
engagement.


Donald Rumsfeld: It is not physically possible to defend in every place,
at every moment... against every conceivable technique.


NewsPoetry: No, not even a multi-trillion dollar missile defense system
could do that. But so what? All that was actually necessary was to defend
the Pentagon and southern Manhattan against a small number of men armed
with plastic knives passing through security checkpoints in broad
daylight.


Administration Official: Critics are crossing a moral line in suggesting
that Bush could have prevented the attacks but did not.


NewsPoetry: Bush is crossing a moral line in bombing Afghanistan, a
country whose population was already on the verge of starvation before
foreign aid was suspended so that yellow food parcels then yellow cluster
bombs might be dropped.


Dick Cheney: Criticism is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of
national leaders in a time of war.


NewsPoetry: Disallowing criticism is irresponsible and unworthy of
national leaders in a time of war. War is irresponsible and unworthy of
national leaders in a time of criticism. I guess what I'm saying, Dick, is
that I disagree. Dick.


Ari Fleischer: Anytime anybody suggests or implies to the American people
that this president had specific information that could have prevented the
attacks on our country on Sept. 11th, that crosses the line.


NewsPoetry: If this president had specific information that could have
prevented the attacks on our country on Sept. 11th, that crosses the line.


Ari Fleischer: Republican New York mayor Michael Bloomberg called the
White House, got Bush's side of the story, and then publicly praised the
president. Bloomberg led, Bush's critics, such as Hilary Rodham Clinton,
divided.


NewsPoetry: Bloomberg followed.


President Bush: Washington is the kind of place where second-guessing has
become second-nature.


NewsPoetry: Er,  forgive me Mr. Bush, are you saying we should only guess
once?


Laura Bush: It is very sad that people would play upon the emotions of the
victims' families, or the emotions of all Americans.


NewsPoetry: Exactly. Thank you.


Condoleeza Rice: I don't think anybody could have predicted the terrorists
would use an airplane as a missile.


NewsPoetry: Whether or not you think, the Minneapolis FBI Office predicted
that terrorists could use an airplane as a missile. Or see "The Sociology and
Psychology of Terrorism" at

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Sociology-Psychology%20of%20Terrorism.htm.

Geez.

I'm getting nowhere with you people.

Can I smoke in here?