I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush (Old Europe gag alert)

The Observer (U.K.) ^ | 01/26/03 | Terry Jones

[Pokey78]

I'm really excited by George Bush's latest reason for bombing Iraq: he's running out of patience. And so am I!

For some time now I've been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I'm sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven't been able to discover what. I've been round to his place a few times to see what he's up to, but he's got everything well hidden. That's how devious he is.

As for Mr Patel, don't ask me how I know, I just know - from very good sources - that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that if we don't act first, he'll pick us off one by one.

Some of my neighbours say, if I've got proof, why don't I go to the police? But that's simply ridiculous. The police will say that they need evidence of a crime with which to charge my neighbours.

They'll come up with endless red tape and quibbling about the rights and wrongs of a pre-emptive strike and all the while Mr Johnson will be finalising his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr Patel will be secretly murdering people. Since I'm the only one in the street with a decent range of automatic firearms, I reckon it's up to me to keep the peace. But until recently that's been a little difficult. Now, however, George W. Bush has made it clear that all I need to do is run out of patience, and then I can wade in and do whatever I want!

And let's face it, Mr Bush's carefully thought-out policy towards Iraq is the only way to bring about international peace and security. The one certain way to stop Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers targeting the US or the UK is to bomb a few Muslim countries that have never threatened us.

That's why I want to blow up Mr Johnson's garage and kill his wife and children. Strike first! That'll teach him a lesson. Then he'll leave us in peace and stop peering at me in that totally unacceptable way.

Mr Bush makes it clear that all he needs to know before bombing Iraq is that Saddam is a really nasty man and that he has weapons of mass destruction - even if no one can find them. I'm certain I've just as much justification for killing Mr Johnson's wife and children as Mr Bush has for bombing Iraq.

Mr Bush's long-term aim is to make the world a safer place by eliminating 'rogue states' and 'terrorism'. It's such a clever long-term aim because how can you ever know when you've achieved it? How will Mr Bush know when he's wiped out all terrorists? When every single terrorist is dead? But then a terrorist is only a terrorist once he's committed an act of terror. What about would-be terrorists? These are the ones you really want to eliminate, since most of the known terrorists, being suicide bombers, have already eliminated themselves.

Perhaps Mr Bush needs to wipe out everyone who could possibly be a future terrorist? Maybe he can't be sure he's achieved his objective until every Muslim fundamentalist is dead? But then some moderate Muslims might convert to fundamentalism. Maybe the only really safe thing to do would be for Mr Bush to eliminate all Muslims?

It's the same in my street. Mr Johnson and Mr Patel are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of other people in the street who I don't like and who - quite frankly - look at me in odd ways. No one will be really safe until I've wiped them all out.

My wife says I might be going too far but I tell her I'm simply using the same logic as the President of the United States. That shuts her up.

Like Mr Bush, I've run out of patience, and if that's a good enough reason for the President, it's good enough for me. I'm going to give the whole street two weeks - no, 10 days - to come out in the open and hand over all aliens and interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar terrorist masterminds, and if they don't hand them over nicely and say 'Thank you', I'm going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come.

It's just as sane as what George W. Bush is proposing - and, in contrast to what he's intending, my policy will destroy only one street.

[Billthedrill]

10,000 dead Kurds, Terry. Poison gas. Laugh that one off.

[mvpel]

He conveniently ignores the brutal invasion and occupation of Kuwait, the use of poison gas on Iranian soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and the litany of torture and abuse that his own government has documented, but then the liberal memory only goes back a very short time when history and facts blow apart their arguments.

[Wolfstar]

This is the silliest piece of clap-trap I've read in a long, long time. The writer's reasoning ability ranks right up there in "brilliance" with that of a chicken or sheep (among God's dumbest creatures). To a twit like this one, 9/11 never happened. Neither did the anthrax attacks, or the close call Britain just had with a ricin attack. Furthermore, I guess Britain's response to all the "troubles" in Northern Ireland through the years was simply to go hat-in-hand to the UN and the EU for permission to do something. Those weren't British tanks and soldiers in the streets of Belfast, Derry and other Northern Irish towns. In a pig's eye!

[Cicero]

Well, even if his neighbors invaded his house every night, beat him up, and robbed him blind, he still wouldn't be allowed to defend himself. That farmer who did got a life sentence for defending himself under such circumstances.

I'm very fond of England, but unless something happens soon to turn it around, it is going down the tubes with the rest of Europe.

[CindyDawg]

Yall remember from your past what comes after "I am running out of patience with you?

[what's up]

I'm sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven't been able to discover what

Is there a list of thousands of WMD that Mr. Johnson had in his possession that he hasn't explained the current whereabouts of?

If not, he may not be a threat, but Saddam Hussein is.

[yooper]

"The one certain way to stop Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers targeting the US or the UK is to bomb a few Muslim countries that have never threatened us."</>

I quit reading this crapola when I got to the above sentence. The author is a flaming idiot.....

[Leisler]

About another 40 thou dead "marsh arabs", 0ne million dead Iranians, 5 thousand Kuiaties......

[wimpycat]

I'm assuming this is the Monty Python Terry Jones.

[Nick Danger]

How does someone with a brain sit down and pen something like this, and then live with themselves afterwards? Never mind Bush, was it not the British government which released a report last September, documenting Saddam Hussein's extensive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons? Does our author imagine that we don't remember that?

I do. I have a copy right here. It's pretty scary. It certainly does not suggest that there is anything the least bit funny about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. Anyone, including the author, can get a copy right here.

By far, the most disgusting, despicable behavior of the political left when conducting political argument is the use of lies which are known to be lies. Nothing so eloquently speaks to the sheer contempt that the leftist has for political dialogue -- or the public itself -- than the willingness to charge forward with an argument based on a brazen lie which has already been publicly debunked.

[optimistically_conservative]

Being a neighbor of Mr. Terry Jones, I thought it necessary to point out some details about Mr. Johnson and Mr. Patel that were, unfortunately, left out of his column.

About 10 years ago, Mr. Johnson broke into the home of our friend Mr. Smith. Mr. Johnson killed Mr. Smith's wife and raped his daughter. He then held Mr. Smith and his surviving family hostage. It seems Mr. Johnson has done this before.

Being uncomfortable with this situation, I called the police. The police were hesitant to do anything about it at first, and settled for a series of phone calls to the home, politely asking Mr. Johnson to release his hostages -- "or else."

I was enraged, so I gathered up some willing friends with our (barely) legal hunting rifles and marched into the street demanding that if the police didn't do something, we would. Soon the police reluctantly joined us, along with a few curious well wishers, and we stormed the house. Shots were exchanged, Mr. Johnson was wounded and the police took him back to his own house. While there, the police found a small arsenal of weapons and paperwork that a large cache of poison gas, explosives and other weapons were hidden in the house. There was also a fight between Mr. Johnson and one of his sons while the police were there and Mr. Johnson killed him. Now Mr. Johnson's other children are wards of the state, they live in protected custody in Mr. Johnson's house.

Mr. Johnson was ordered to never leave his house and to turn over all his weapons and destructive devices. Mr. Johnson admitted having 30,000 bombs and tons of poisons and viruses, but he never turned them over, and the "detectives" never could find them. Four years ago, Mr. Johnson filed an harrassment suit and the detectives stopped looking.

Yesterday, a bomb went off in my house, killing my youngest daughter. One of the bombers died at the scene as well. I've seen the bomber before coming and going from Mr. Johnson's house along with some others. The day my daughter was killed, Mr. Johnson stood in his yard and told me and my neighbors that I had reaped the thorns I have planted in the neighborhood. I think Mr. Johnson had something to do with it. I can't prove it, and the police are telling me they're looking into it. I asked the police if Mr. Johnson still has all those bombs and poisons. The police tell me they've started looking again for them, but they can't find them -- and Mr. Johnson says he doesn't have them -- so there is nothing they can really do - except keep looking.

Mr. Jones today tells me that as long as Mr. Johnson stays in his house, I'm safe, and I really have no right to cast suspicion on Mr. Johnson without proof. I think Mr. Johnson is very dangerous. Perhaps he didn't place the bomb himself, or through a proxy, but I have a strong suspicion that he encouraged it in some way. I think I will be bombed again, or someone else in my neighborhood will. So I met with Mr. Johnson and gave him three choices:

1. He can cooperate with the detectives and turn over all his bombs, at least 30,000 of them, and his poisons and whatever else he has - or prove beyond a doubt he doesn't have them.

2. He can leave the neighborhood on his own.

3. He can meet me out back for a good a$$ whoopin'. And despite Mr. Johnson's bluster, there's no doubt I'd whoop his a$$.

I also told him he doesn't have a lot of time to make up his mind, and the a$$ whoopin' would come at the time and place of my choosing.

Well, that should fill you in on Mr. Johnson. As far as Mr. Patel's concerned, he's a nuisance. He needs to be the center of attention in the neighborhood and hates for anyone to say anything unfavorable about him. Potentially Mr. Patel could be a problem, but he really doesn't scare me.

By the way, my friends and I don't think much of Mr. Jones. He's not very smart and a bit of a weeny. Lucky for him, he's got a big brother we think very highly of.

[Brian Allen]

<< .... I've run out of patience, and .. that's a good enough reason for .... me. I'm going to give the whole street two weeks - no, 10 days - to come out in the open and hand over all aliens and interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar terrorist masterminds, and if they don't hand them over nicely and say 'Thank you', I'm going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come .... >>

This apparently drunk and/or drugged Limey moron makes two egregious errors, one of which would not have mattered near as much before September 11 2001 -- and the other which American good humor, patience and tolerance would simply, before that date, have rolled with:

He overlooks the small matter of the reality of a million and a half dead in Iraq and Iran -- almost 200,000 of them cold-blooded murders directly attributable to Soddom -- and 3000 dead in New York and Washington DC at the hand of those incited, encouraged, enabled and harbored by the Butcher of Baghdad [I won't bother to mention Soddom's obsessive-compulsive attempts at creating nuclear arms programs -- the writer of this infantile diatribe is British and probably wouldn't understand the significance of that, either -- or the big words] -- and;

He presumes that, post September 11 2001, Our Nation could care less what anybody anywhere on Earth says or feels about US projecting Our Power across the globe and taking care of that we see it our business to take care of.

And this is where the EURO-peons' post-September 11 2001 miscalculation offers them up their biggest surprise. Our good natured acceptance of their centuries-long supercilious superiority is now met with contempt for it and for them -- and with a demonstration of Our Nation's quiet determination to do what is necessary to succeed.

And to Hell with Europe's -- and the rest of the world's -- supercilious!

[Happygal]

This is the WORST piece of alarmist clap trap journalism I've ever seen in my life. AND I know! I work in the industry!

Jesus wept.

[F.J. Mitchell]

I am running out of patience with smug idiot writers of the ilk of nerdy Terdy Jones.

[L`enn]

Absolutely brilliant rebuttal post. Bravo!

[Ichabod Walrus]

10,000 dead Kurds, Terry. Poison gas. Laugh that one off.

You think Bush Jr. cares about Kurds? Since when exactly?

We know Bush Sr. certainly doesn't. Don't you think he bears some responsibility for setting them up? Because that's what he did.

Dead and tortured Kurds in Turkey have never been a problem either. Presumably because they are "bad Kurds" as opposed to the "good Kurds" of Iraq - except when they are killed by Turkish troops, of course, and for which they can also be safely labelled "bad".

[Billthedrill]

What on earth has that got to do with anything? They're dead, and Saddam killed them. I've heard that "setting them up" argument before - it's convenient because it's totally unrefutable, just as the "we gave him the gas" accusation, and the "we encouraged him to invade Kuwait" one. You can try to muddy the water with moral equivalency all you like, and the author is merrily trying to do precisely that, but the fact is that Saddam killed his own people with poison gas, and Bush did not.

What Bush does care about is twofold - first, that Saddam might start a general Mideast war, and second, that he might engineer release of that sort of weapon on Americans. And that's what I want him to care about.

[DB]

Clinton is the one who dropped the ball.

[Cindy]

Obviously the author of this piece is dumber than dirt. It's one thing to be a fool, but to be a fool in public is truly the ultimate of foolishness.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

***stepping back in time...COMPUTER WORLD - Security Topics: "EXCLUSIVE: BIN LADEN ASSOCIATE WARNS OF CYBERATTACKS" by Dan Verton (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "A London-based fundamentalist Islamic cleric with known ties to Osama bin Laden said al-Qaeda and various other fundamentalist Muslim groups around the world are actively planning to use the Internet as a weapon in their "defensive" jihad, or holy war, against the West. In an exclusive interview today with Computerworld, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, founder of the London-based group Jama'at Al-Muhajirun and the spokesman for Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, said all types of technology, including the Internet, are being studied for use in the global jihad against the West...") (November 18, 2002)

NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION CENTER: "What's New"

***TOWNHALL.com: "THE STATE OF OUR BORDERS 2003" -Column by Michelle Malkin (012403)

***FOX NEWS.com (AP): "FBI SEARCHES FOR IRAQI SPIES, TERROR CELLS IN U.S." (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON - The FBI is questioning as many as 50,000 Iraqis living in the United States in a search for potential terrorist cells, spies or people who might provide information helpful to a U.S. war effort.") (012403)

***INSIGHT On The News online: "'GRAY LADY' RUNS AD FOR TERRORISTS" by Kenneth R. Timmerman (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The New York Times has published a full-page advertisement for an Iraqi-based terrorist group that boasts of the support the group has received from 150 members of Congress. The group, the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), claims to have thousands of armed members based in military camps in Iraq, financed and equipped by Saddam Hussein.) (January 24, 2003)

FREE CONGRESS.org - THE FREE CONGRESS FOUNDATION - Notable News: "ONE WHO DARES CALL IT 'TREASON'" -Commentary by Paul M. Weyrich (COMMENTARY SNIPPET: "So how does Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) justify holding a reception for the Mujahedin-e Kalq? The U.S. State Department, since 1994, has listed this group as one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world. The State Department says that this Marxist-Muslim group has killed many Americans and had blown up a number of U.S. facilities in Iran. This group participated in the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. This group had a falling out with the Ayatollah Khomeni, according to The Washington Times, so the group fled to Iraq and now is funded by Saddam Hussein. The group helped Hussein fight the Kurds in the North of Iraq when chemical weapons were used.") (112502)

GOOGLE Search Term: "MUJAHEDIN-E KHALQ"

GOOGLE Search Term: "MUJAHEDIN-E KHALIQ"

GOOGLE Search Term: "MUJAHEDIN-E KALQ"

WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV - Office of Global Communications: "APPARATUS OF LIES Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003"

stepping back in time...WASHINGTON TIMES.com: "AL QAEDA LINKED TO IRAQI LAB" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "U.S. officials believe the terrorists tested a biological toxin known as ricin, a deadly poison made from the castor-bean plant.") (082002)

***BBC NEWS: "NEW IRAQ DOCUMENT FIND ALARMS UN" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The head of the United Nations atomic agency has voiced concern about documents apparently relating to nuclear technology which were found in an Iraqi scientist's home. The documents, numbering 3,000 pages, appear to focus on laser enrichment - a way to modify uranium for use in nuclear weapons - and were taken from the home of physicist Faleh Hassan on Thursday.") (011803)

***NATIONAL POST.com: "AL QAEDA PLANNING URANIUM BOMB: UN" by Steven Edwards (121102)

***MSNBC.com: "REPORT: AL QAEDA DEAL FOR NERVE GAS U.S. Suspects Nerve Agent VX Was Smuggled Through Turkey" (121202)

stepping back in time..."IRAQ REPORT, SEPTEMBER 7, 2001, VOLUME 9, NUMBER 28: ARTICLE SNIPPET: "IRAQI CHEMICAL WEAPONS BUILDUP REPORTED. The "Sunday Telegraph" of 2 September reported that at least 20 specially trained Iraqi soldiers are dead and up to 200 have been hospitalized after taking part in a chemical weapon exercise that went wrong. News of the accident emerged last week amid concerns that Saddam Husseyn has rebuilt his chemical weapons arsenal. Intelligence sources reported that the soldiers were based in the Za'farniya region south of Baghdad. A diplomat said that they were training in the Al-Suwayra and Basmaya camps three months ago. After the accident, new soldiers were brought in. In the past three months, eight military factories have been working at almost full strength. The "Sunday Telegraph" says that the most significant of them in the unpopulated Syrian border area of Al-Qayem is said to be building chemical weapons and missiles. According to a Western military observer, "the Al-Qayem base has only recently expanded It just passed under the control of Saddam's son and heir Qusay." There is also evidence that Saddam's most sophisticated Chinese-built radar tracking systems are back to strength." (David Nissman)

WASHINGTON TIMES.com: "IRAQ SAID TO BE STASHING ARMS" by Rowan Scarborough (011703)

GOOGLE Search Term: "TIKRIT"

***An Informative Discussion on FREEREPUBLIC.com regarding a FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE.com article by Jonathan Schanzer, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: "ANSAR AL-ISLAM: IRAQ'S AL-QAEDA CONNECTION" (January 17, 2003)

***MEMRI.org - MIDDLE EAST MEDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE: "EDITOR OF IRANIAN CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT DAILY ATTACKS PRESIDENT BUSH AND CALLS ON MUSLIM YOUTH TO LAUNCH MARTYRDOM OPERATIONS AGAINST THE U.S." (ARTICLE NOTE: The editor is identified as Hussain Shariatmadari.) (NOTE: "Martyrdom" is also known as "Shehada.") (012303)

***TALIBAN ONLINE - Posted by "She Taliban": "HAMAS WILL TAKE WAR OUTSIDE PALESTINE IF US ATTACKS IRAQ" by Nidal al-Mughrabi (January 18, 2003)

***An Interesting Discussion on FREEREPUBLIC.com regarding this article dated January 10, 2003 from THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY INSTITUTE FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM: "AL-QAIDA SUPPORTERS THREATEN NUCLEAR ATTACKS" (011803)

***AFTENPOSTEN.no: "USA WANTS NORWAY TO WATCH KREKAR" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Mullah Krekar has been, and likely remains, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, a fringe Islamic group in Iranian Kurdistan accused of having connections to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. The New York Times reported the connection last week after interviews with Ansa al-Islam members, and after finding documents in Afghanistan mentioning direct links to al-Qaeda.") (January 17, 2003)