[Newspoetry] Bush's January Surprise

[Donald L Emerick]

DateLine Baghdad, 27 January
A NewsPoetry WorldWide Exclusive

Bush's January Surprise

While traipsing through the corridors of power this morning in Baghdad, I found a conference room door ajar in the Ministry of (Dis)Information.  I heard three voices speaking, in soft self re-assuring tones of Bush's plan for the Iraqi elections.  However, I couldn't identify for sure who these speakers were -- they must remain faceless, as so much of the truth about Iraq is -- anonymous to point of being unseen, though its noise fills our ears, confuses our thinking, evades our moral censure.

So, what did these horatio-hornblowing-alger hisses say?

If you remember, Bush loves a good secret -- and he loves to get ahead of the other guys.  Just as when he handed over power early to so-called Iraqi-authorities, Bush secretly plans to advance the date of the Iraqi elections to January 28th!  Yes, you've heard here first!  The first Iraqi free and democratic elections will be held on January 28t!

Boy, talk about secret ballot!  Bush will have set a new Guiness record in securing the secrecy of the ballot.

Where will the votes come from, if nobody knows that an election is in progress?  Well, Bush folks privately (personally, as they prefer to say, when speaking off the record) say they have used national security dollars to field test this election scheme in the US presidential elections last fall.  They know it works and will deliver millions of votes for their previously chosen candidate.

Simulating democracy is easy, says one Bush colleague.  "We discovered that voters in the US can not tell the difference between virtual democracy and true democracy after the 2000 elections.  It is a lot cheaper to simulate deep abstractions like truth, justice and the American way of freedom -- and we can always have our way!"