by Dave Tomar

G21 Satire Columnist

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CAMDEN, NJ, USA - This week President Bush voiced America's readiness for war with Iraq, proclaiming that "we've come too far as a species to resort to the archaic measures of peace and negotiations."

Referring to the March 17th deadline imposed upon Iraq for complete disarmament, Bush explained that "it is time for the United Nations to prove its relevance by succumbing to the overwhelming influence of the United States. I want the U.N. to show that it is a legitimate forum for international exchange by reflecting the interests of the Bush family as well as its shareholders and subsidiaries."

As American and British bombers undertook a third straight week of daily "practice drills," that targeted "facilities routinely used to sustain Iraqi life," the Bush administration maintained its stance that war could be avoided by way of complete disarmament, as determined by "an impartial team of Texas C.E.O.s with an interest in world peace." White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer promised, however, during a Wednesday briefing, that "if the United Nations is not willing to act on the wealth of incomprehensible photographs, forged documents, outdated figures, religious tirades and unsubstantiated reports that we have delivered, then the United States is prepared to go it alone. We are just that willing to protect the world from Saddam Hussein's ownership of oil."

The president has characterized this afternoon's decision, which is expected to determine whether Iraq's population will be devastated unilaterally or multilaterally, as a moment of truth, "in that everything up to now has been complete falsehood on our part." However, French Prime Minister Jacque Chirac's announcement this week that France would veto any resolution prompting immediate military action in Iraq, has cast significant doubt on the likelihood of U.N. support.

So in the days leading up to the deadline, the Bush administration has placed its focus on coming up with slurs to describe the French. Bush expounded upon the trying process before reporters on Thursday, lamenting that "it's not easy for me to come up with words to say things."

But after sequestering himself to the war room with seven of his closest advisors, the president emerged on Thursday from a six hour conference that yielded a catalogue of names to be used to slander the French during the upcoming conflict. The administration is excitedly anticipating a broad-based penetration of these derogatory terms into everyday American parlance, as the incubation of such prejudices "could help to stoke enough indiscriminate hatred amongst Americans to legitimize a war against anybody," according to Bush. Bush reminded reporters that disrupting sixty years of friendship with Europe was one of his campaign promises.

A White House official, who requested anonymity, revealed that among the many terms that will be used to describe our former allies, some of the president's personal favorites were "wine-sucking whore-mongers," "mold-munching child pornographers," and "faggots."

Subsequently, the unidentified officials admitted that "we came up with some much better ones than that. But the president didn't get any of them. Ethnic slurs aren't funny if you have to explain them to somebody." He defended the president though, indicating that while he didn't understand too many of the French jokes due to "his overall lack of cultural awareness," he was always the first guy in a room to either laugh at or tell a high-concept racist joke.

Administration officials have spoken lightly of the invigorated squabble with France in many instances, such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's Friday press conference, during which he joked: "To show you just how much we care about France, I can tell you that the president doesn't even know where it is on the map. He swears up and down that 'France is in Canada.' Frankly, we let the president believe what he wants to believe."

The candid remarks, however, belie a much more serious effort in Washington to be protected from virulent French propaganda, that has manifested itself as a fundamental change in capital city policy.

As of this past Monday, conversation over the lunch table will be a lot different in the House of Representatives, where the cafeteria has restricted not only the use of the French language but even the use of the word 'French' when ordering food. In accordance, French fries and French toast will henceforth be known as Freedom fries and Freedom toast. And while the change has been met with approval by most United States Representatives, many of whom have admitted to "feeling uncomfortable about purchasing foreign foods to begin with," this momentous overhaul of culinary labeling catapulted the D.C. area into a frenzy of activity and speculation.

The onion-ring lobbyist group, Americans for the Advancement of Fried and Breaded Onions, a historically influential political organization, voiced its discontent with the new title designated to French fries, releasing the public statement that "we feel, as do most Americans, that the onion ring, far more than the French fry, is a side-dish most synonymous with liberty, freedom, democracy and the things this nation stands for. To refer to French Fries as Freedom Fries is a gross distortion of history, particularly when one considers the French Fry's integral involvement in Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba, its well-documented stance as a Nazi sympathizer and an unfortunately under-publicized stint as a Cold War operative for the former Soviet Union. Do not forget the onion ring's great service to its people and its Constitution."

While the loss of support from the powerful side-order group would be damaging to Bush's bid for a second term, the White House responded to the complaint by advocating the HOR's decision, asserting that "essentially, they're all a part of the same Ore Ida political machine."

The alteration of French toast caused considerably more consternation however as the name Freedom Toast had previously been designated to toasted Italian rolls, which were considered treasonous under their ethnic title during World War II. Italian Rolls, therefore, will be referred to as Freedom Bread. The name Freedom Bread had formerly been applied to the Danish, a result of Denmark's 1980 Olympic Figure Skating defeat of the United States. "Consequently, Danishes will no longer be available in the capital" explained Chief of HOR Culinary Administration, Corbin Johnson of "both the pastries and the people." While the broad-based efforts to purge capital menus of foreign incursion have been criticized as petty and inane by some, such alterations are historically common, some of the most famous incidences thereof being the Cold War conversion from Polish Sausage to Liberty Pork, the WWII renaming of Œsauerkraut' as Œmilkshake' and, in a recent White House effort to distinguish itself from Israeli policy, the conversion from the Kosher weiner to the Ari Fleischer.

And it may not end there.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has spent the last two months attempting to rally international support for a war on Iraq pledged that "if Mexico doesn't commit to war, we're simply going to take Mexican babies off the menu altogether. Only Texan Senators and Cheney order them anyway." Powell went on to promise that this effort would not prevent federal institutions from hiring their parents to wash dishes at gunpoint for a dollar an hour.

And while these efforts to protect Americans from foreign impurities continue on the homefront, the Bush administration spoke this week of its military strategy for dispatching of threats abroad, detailing the nature of the "Shock and Awe approach." The new type of warfare consists of an opening airstrike campaign that is so economically, psychologically and mortally devastating to the nation in question that the war's conclusion is foregone from there on out. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said of the strategy during a briefing on Tuesday, "I know it sounds like we're joking, using hyperbole to downplay what we're actually doing. But we're not." In concurrence with the revelation of this approach, the U.S. detonated a test version of the Massive Ordinance Air Blast, a 21,000 pound bomb, in order to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is a threat to world order and security.

And remember, as always, the monkey goes where the wind blows.

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DAVE TOMAR is a Rutgers University Graduate with Bachelor's Degrees in Communication and Planning and Public Policy. As a freelance writer, he has published music reviews and editorials with Chorus and Verse, Propeller Magazine, Nefarious Entertainment Magazine, Synthesis.net and Uwire.com. He has also completed a satirical novel on the topic of popular music entitled "Easily Amused." As a political activist, he has published over 60 installments of his column "The Monkey Goes Where The Wind Blows" with the campus publication The Outside World. The column can also be found at juryfury.com. This is his second article for The World's Magazine.