Beating Around the Bush

by Buchwald, Art

  “Because of security?”

  “No, because he doesn’t want Mrs. Hussein to find out about her.”

  “What is Mrs. Hussein like?” I asked.

  “She is high-maintenance. She has dyed-blond hair, wears Western clothes, and she is terribly jealous. Saddam is her first cousin. She is known in Iraq as Sajida Khayrallah. We now know they have had a stormy marriage for 32 years.”

  He continued, “One of the Saddams is a big spender. Sajida doesn’t know it, but every time he buys a piece of jewelry for his wife, he also buys one for his mistress.”

  “Why don’t you think he’s the real one?”

  “Because if he was, Sajida would kill him.”

  “What about the Saddam who is always on TV shooting off his rifle into the air?”

  “Have you noticed he never shoots down a pigeon?”

  “That could be a smoking gun,” I said. “What about the Saddam we see pictured at a cabinet meeting?”

  “Have you noticed the cabinet treats him with no respect?”

  “The real Saddam could be the one that shows up at anti-American demonstrations and burns the American flag,” I suggested.

  “It would be very dangerous for the real one to show up because we might take a potshot at him.”

  “The plot thickens,” I said.

  “The one we are taking a careful look at is the ‘Saddam in the Bunker’ theory. We know Hussein was a big fan of Hitler’s, and Saddam knows he could end up the way Adolf did.”

  “Including hanging out with his mistress?” I asked.

  “Possibly. We know Mrs. Hussein. She would never live in a bunker.”

  “Hussein has a son named Uday who is a terrible man. Does he have a double, too?”

  “Yes, but we don’t know if the real Uday is a drunk driver or chases Iraqi girls.”

  “He does both. Question: If there are so many Saddam impersonators and we don’t know who the real one is, does that mean we have to carpet-bomb Baghdad?”

  “That’s probably one of Bush’s major options.”

  Just then the bus pulled up. As we got on, the bus driver, who knew Langley very well, said, “Watch your step.”

  I Hate Saddam

  I HAVE A CONFESSION to make. I hate Saddam Hussein. I hate him more than anyone in the world.

  I hate him even more than Washington does.

  It was a shock to read in Newsweek that Washington didn’t always hate Saddam Hussein.

  According to State Department reports just released, a secretary of defense, who shall remain nameless, went over to Baghdad as a special envoy in 1983 for President Reagan. His mission was to sell Hussein biological weapons so Iraq could poison the hell out of Iran, which at that time was the United States’ worst enemy.

  The secretary persuaded Hussein to buy 2,200 gallons of anthrax spores, which were shipped from Manassas, Va.; 5,300 gallons of deadly botulinum, which could be loaded into war-heads; and hundreds of gallons of germs that could be used to make gas gangrene.

  When Saddam Hussein was losing the war against Iran, the United States also supplied him with tanks, helicopters and other military equipment.

  I played no part in any of this. Unlike Washington, I hated Hussein long before he got into a war with Iran. I didn’t come late into the Hating Game because every time I saw him on TV, I suspected him of one day turning against us.

  The other day a diplomat friend defended the secretary for not hating Saddam at that time, and even for shaking his hand in the Iraqi capital. He said, “It’s one thing to hate a dictator all the time, but it’s another if you’re trying to help one dictator to beat another dictator.”

  He said, “The fact that you support one side one day and the other side the next day is what real diplomacy is all about. That was Henry Kissinger’s specialty. Suppose Iran had defeated Iraq? Don’t you think the Iranians would try to build weapons of mass destruction?”

  I said, “But what about all the tanks, helicopters and missiles we gave Iraq? Won’t they be used against us if we go to war now?”

  “If they dare use that equipment, they will get a bloody nose from the secretary of defense. It’s hard for him to explain to the Pentagon why he had his picture taken in 1983 with Saddam Hussein.”

  My diplomat friend said, “This isn’t the first time the Americans have changed enemies. Stalin was our friend during World War II, and after the war he became our mortal enemy.

  “After we beat Germany and Japan, we gave them all the equipment needed to make automobiles. And even now we’re urging American tourists to go to Vietnam.”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  He said, “Our plan is to bomb Baghdad in a preemptive strike and force Iraq to surrender. But after the war we’re not going to help them make automobiles. The United States is no longer going to be known as Mr. Nice Guy.”

  To Lose One’s Center

  ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, I lost my center. That is, the world as I knew it crashed in on me, as it did for everyone else in America.

  Before that day, I had dreams for my children and grandchildren. I felt safe.

  Anything bad that happened was in the movies. Hollywood provided me with all my thrills and fears.

  After 9/11, it took me a week to deal with the shock. I knew that I wasn’t watching a movie. This was the real thing.

  The TV screen became my information center.

  Over and over they played the hijacked planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and somewhere in Pennsylvania. I saw frightened people running in the streets. I heard the wild guesses on how many people were killed and how many were injured.

  At that time, no one knew who the terrorists were and no one had an answer for how four airplanes could be hijacked at the same time.

  I didn’t know where Afghanistan was, and I had never heard of al Qaeda or the Taliban.

  For the first time, Osama bin Laden came into my life as the super-villain of 9/11. He filled me with rage. The television screen showed old photos of him and kept switching back to the World Trade Center.

  I was sure we would find him and kill him.

  That was the Special Forces’ job.

  If they want war, we’ll give them war. We’ll bomb them in the cities and in the caves. That is what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was saying when he came on the screen.

  I thought about what Attorney General John Ashcroft would do to protect us from the enemy. How many constitutional rights would he have to take away from us to guarantee our safety?

  The president said we were at war.

  This wasn’t a movie.

  First we grieved for the victims of 9/11. Then a wave of patriotism swept the country. We were told to go about our business but to remain vigilant and alert.

  As the year went by, things happened. I had lost my center, but Wall Street had lost its moral compass.

  We couldn’t trust anybody anymore.

  The major institutions that I believed in were found to be driven by greed. We no longer believe accountants, brokers, banks and what the CEOs told us.

  People’s pensions were wiped out. Executives were arrested. Coming on the heels of 9/11, I didn’t know whom to trust anymore.

  We carpet-bombed Afghanistan, but we never found bin Laden.

  We won the war, but the peace is still to come.

  I tried to go about my business as I had before, but it wasn’t the same and never would be.

  I tried to make plans for the future, but my heart wasn’t in it.

  I was told by the president we have to invade Iraq, but he didn’t tell me how to do it.

  For the first time, I knew there was somebody out there who wanted to kill me.

  In the past, I thought terrorists were people far away. After 9/11, I felt they were right next door. My world was no longer what I wanted it to be. It was not a movie.

  Games Children Play

  THE ALLEGED SNIPERS were caught and it is now safe to go out i
n the streets. I paid a visit to the Folsoms to see if they were all right.

  The reason I was so concerned is that Carla Folsom was hysterical during the past several weeks.

  She said, “I can’t understand how anybody could do what they did.”

  “It’s hard to figure out.”

  Just then Jimmy, the Folsoms’ twelve-year-old, came into the room. He said, “Do you want to play a video game?”

  Carla said to me, “Go ahead. He’s been cooped up for three weeks.”

  We went to the rec room.

  “What do you want to play?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “How about ‘Hitman 2: Silent Assassin’?”

  “What else do you have?”

  “Here’s one. ‘Splinter Cell.’ You have the right to spy, steal, destroy and assassinate to protect American freedoms. If captured, your government will disavow any knowledge of your existence.”

  “Is that all you’ve got?”

  Jimmy kept going through his collection. He read from a cover. “It’s time for a little urban renewal. Take command of 120 fully armed, fully loaded Meganites and stop the apocalyptic Volgara invasion through our cities. It means you have to knock down buildings and crush some pedestrians. We didn’t say it would be easy but, hey, nothing is.”

  I picked up another game and read, “Give peace a chance. The lines of good and evil have been drawn. Your weapon is a walking death machine and your mission is to destroy everything on the planet.”

  Carla came down to the basement. “How are you guys doing?”

  I said, “We’re having a problem picking the most frightening one.”

  “Jimmy has one of the best collections in the neighborhood.”

  “The violence for a twelve-year-old boy doesn’t bother you?”

  “It’s just a video game. By the way, Jimmy has given me a list of the new ones coming out for Christmas.”

  Jimmy said, “I can’t wait for ‘Car Stealers,’ ‘Torture in Iraq’ and ‘Blowing Up Public Schools.’”

  “They all sound interesting,” I said. “In my day we played Elvis Presley records. Now video games seem to be the indoor sport.”

  Carla said, “Thank God. It got Jimmy through the sniper crisis. He couldn’t sleep while the snipers were out there.”

  Jimmy said, “How about ‘Saving the Human Race—No Matter What the Cost’?”

  “Suits me,” I said. “It makes you think.”

  Come Fly With Me

  IN 2003 THE COUNTRY celebrated the 100th anniversary of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first flight. On December 17, 1903, Orville took off near Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and stayed in the air for 12 seconds. Then Wilbur, on the same day, flew the same plane 852 feet in 59 seconds.

  What very few people know is that it didn’t work out as well as everyone expected. Two weeks later they started an airline, Wright Brothers Express, which flew between Dayton and Akron, Ohio. Two weeks after that, they filed for bankruptcy.

  Orville said: “We didn’t expect business to be that bad. People just weren’t flying as much as we expected.”

  Wilbur said: “We offered discount fares, frequent-flier miles and free coffee—and we still had to go into Chapter 11. The banks wouldn’t give us any more money.”

  Orville said, “To stay afloat, we were told we had to downsize our operation.”

  “The only way to do this,” Wilbur said, “was to fire either Orville or myself. It hasn’t been an easy time for either of us. I should have stayed because I was the more experienced pilot. I flew the plane 852 feet and Orville flew it only 120 feet.”

  “But,” said Orville, “I was the first one to fly.”

  To eliminate unneeded help, the bankruptcy judge said the brothers had to fire all the ground mechanics, except the one who turned the propellers to start the plane.

  The Wright brothers blamed themselves for choosing to make the first commercial route between Dayton and Akron. Orville said, “No one in Dayton wanted to go to Akron, and no one in Akron wanted to go to Dayton, so we offered flights from Dayton to Cleveland.”

  Wilbur said, “It didn’t get us out of the red, so we asked the government to bail us out. We argued that if the Feds didn’t come to our rescue, there would never be commercial aviation.”

  Orville said, “The government turned us down on the grounds that if flying ever caught on, many airlines would go bankrupt.”

  Wilbur added, “When we were turned down by the Feds, Wright Brothers stock plummeted.”

  Orville agreed: “Wall Street stopped believing in us. The only thing we still had was our bicycle business.”

  Wilbur said, “That is what we were originally noted for.”

  In spite of all the setbacks, the Wright brothers continued running their airline with one, then two, and then three planes—all made of muslin and plywood.

  They flew to Muncie, Indiana, Paducah, Kentucky, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. The name Wright Brothers Express never caught on, so they decided to change it to United Airlines because it had more sex appeal to it, at least until it went broke.

  Foreign Affairs for Dummies

  THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON in the world that every time I get lost I refer to my book, Foreign Affairs for Dummies.

  Here is what it says:

  QUESTION: If a smoking gun can’t be found in Iraq, where can you find one?

  ANSWER: In North Korea. They announced they have a smoking gun and are proud of it.

  Q: If they can’t find one in Iraq, then why should we unilaterally go there?

  A: Because our troops are there. They are prepared to fight in Iraq, but they are not prepared to fight in North Korea. The Bush Administration has been ready to fight in Baghdad for over a year, and if we don’t topple Saddam Hussein now the U.S. will have egg on its face.

  Q: How much money will it cost us to go into Iraq and find a smoking gun?

  A: Probably $200 billion.

  Q: So, if we don’t go into North Korea we will save $200 billion?

  A: That’s correct. That way the president can afford to give us another tax cut.

  Q: How do our allies feel about this?

  A: Most of them are for us, but don’t want American troops on their soil if we go to war.

  Q: Is it true when the president says that oil is not part of the equation in our foreign policy?

  A: Of course it is. When you’re acting diplomatically, you can’t let petroleum get in the way of liberating a dictatorship.

  Q: Is North Korea a dictatorship?

  A: Probably, but we can’t do anything about it because it’s too close to China, and we don’t want the Chinese to get mad at us, because they are our best trading partners.

  Q: A lot of countries have smoking guns now—Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Israel, France and Great Britain, to name a few. How many countries are we going to attack after we wipe out Iraq?

  A: We’re not necessarily going to attack them. In a lot of cases, we’ll just bomb their smoking gun factories.

  Q: Can we send UN inspectors into the countries that are suspect?

  A: You can’t send them into France and Great Britain because you would be violating their sovereignty.

  Q: How long will it take to eliminate Saddam from power?

  A: Anywhere from two weeks to two years.

  Q: And how long will it take for a democratic regime to take his place?

  A: Anywhere from two weeks to two years.

  Q: Am I going crazy?

  A: It’s very possible.

  The Last Pill

  THOMAS GREENTREE was taking antidepressant pills. Each one cost $10.

  When I saw him, he was very depressed.

  He said, “I have no more money for pills. I used up my health insurance, and I can no longer borrow from my relatives.”

  “That’s tough. What are you holding in your hand?”

  “It’s my last pill. After I take it, it’s all over for me. I’ve
been staring at it for hours. I’m depressed if I take it, and I’m depressed if I don’t.”

  “That’s tough.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken them in the first place, because now I’ve gotten used to them.”

  “Couldn’t you take a placebo and pretend it’s an antidepressant?”

  “It doesn’t work for me because I know it’s a placebo. Anyhow, my health plan won’t pay for placebos. Would you like to see the pill?”

  “Of course. This is a collector’s item.”

  He handed the tablet to me. “Be careful,” he warned, “I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

  I examined it in the light. “It’s beautiful. I saw one just like it on television. The announcer said: ‘It isn’t for everybody. See your doctor first.’”

  Greentree said, “So I went to my doctor and he told me it’s only for people who can afford it. When I went yesterday and told him I had only one pill left, he said, ‘Then work yourself out of the depression like a man.’”

  “That’s some doctor.”

  “I am wrestling with the decision to take it or save it until my depression gets worse.”

  “How serious is it now?”

  “I don’t want to commit suicide.”

  “That’s good. If you ever do, you can take the pill first. I’d give you some of mine, but they have different side effects. For example, they cheer me up, but every time I take one I feel like shoplifting.”

  He said, “At least you have something you can count on.”

  I said, “Why don’t you give the last pill to the Smithsonian Institution? You would still be depressed, but you would get a tax deduction.”

  “I don’t have a job. That’s one reason I’m so depressed.”

  “Have you ever thought of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?”

  He replied, “Everyone tells me to do that so I won’t ask them for money.”

  I said, “People who aren’t depressed always say that. It’s too bad you don’t have any money. If you did, you could go to Canada and buy the antidepressants at half price.”

  “I think I’ll take the pill now. Will you stay with me until it works?”