The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

This just in. The little big daddy of Baghdad, Mohammad Saeed (a.k.a. Said) al-Sahhaf, has issued his farewell statement to interested media. It reads: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

We next expect he will issue a revised assessment of the progress of the War of Liberation in Iraq. It will echo the views of those who in recent days have gotten out of their once proud uniforms and were last seen running along a river bank in their underwear. Mr. al-Sahhaf will repeat after rooster-hawk Michael Kinsley, "No sane person doubted that the mighty U.S. military machine could defeat and conquer" tiny Iraq. Or after chicken egghead Paul Krugman: "Even skeptics about this war expected a military victory" (give or take a thousand years). Or after Kinsley plagiarist Mary Jane Arthur, in Friday's N.Y. Times: "Was there ever any doubt that the mighty United States military machine would win the war against a fourth-rate army defending its homeland?" Ms. Arthur still calls the war "morally wrong." She's never been tortured, at least outside Republican-controlled precincts.

The mighty United States golfing machine is now under pressure from antiwar remnants to rename himself Tigris Woods. Meanwhile, the almighty protesting machine known as Martha Burk has been overheard hissing at passers-by at Augusta, in a kind of Southern accent, "Euphrates (i.e. you afraid) of the while male power structure?" No one appears to be listening to her, alas, country club golf being a particularly rowdy sport at which spectators often complain they can't hear themselves think amid the thwacks, whizzing divots, blasted sand and other din.

Generalissima Nancy Pelosi's war plan continues to provoke heated discussion, though no one questions its credibility. "We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less" than $100 billion, she said yesterday. As an experienced homemaker, she knows what of she speaks. Think of all the coupons she has clipped over the years. It's not clear at which Baghdad statue demolition company she could redeem them, but her many years spent among House Democrats suggest she knows full well how to deal with looters. What's more, instead of relying on men and machines to bring down "that statue," she'd have enlisted an independent contractor like Martha Burk to huff and puff it into oblivion. Mr. Saddam Hussein has a lot to answer for, particularly why no portraits or statues of Mrs. Saddam or Ms. Burk ever graced the Iraqi public square.

In another breakthrough for CNN, the network now finds itself awaiting trial at the Hague on charges of aiding and abetting war crimes against humanity. If Mr. Milosevic ever shuts up we can get on with it. The case represents an unprecedented victory against the guardians of media bias. Without the protection it relied on from goons of the Saddam regime, CNN can no longer suppress news of the brutality it knew all along was a staple of Saddamite rule. One of its top executives makes a full confession in Friday's New York Times. For years, he writes, he and the network were well aware that "Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed." To retain its journalistic objectivity, CNN proceeded to argue just the opposite. Where's Peter Arnett when you need him?

In the category of class acts, Mr. Martin Peretz, the man who fired Michael Kelly for rhetorical crimes against Clinton-Gore, wrote to the nation's paper of record, before Mr. Kelly was even laid to rest, to insist that Kelly was fired for going after Clinton, not for going after Gore. The clarification was warmly received by Mr. Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who never could figure out Peretz's modus operandi and had been hallucinating ever since. There are many EOW's out there this time around, but only one Marty Peretz. So let's let him have it.

topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Military, Iraq