Terrible, swift swords Bold Bush plan uses divine intervention to ward off attack
(Maybe you'll want to join this group! Tee Hee!) - MEPHISTO
By Gregg Easterbrook
SLATE.COM
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — President George W.
Bush announced an initiative to develop a
faith-based missile defense. "For too long,
military planners have been denied the use of the
supernatural in attempting to protect American
citizens from attack," Bush declared today in a
speech to the National Association of Amateur
Submarine Captains.
"There is no reason why we cannot maintain a healthy separation of church and state while still
calling on divine intervention for the Pentagon budget. Faith-based missile defense will be constitutional
and fully consistent with the way the Founding Fathers expected this great nation to handle
ICBM threats," the president said.
THE FAITH-BASED defense would be nondenominational and designed to protect Jews, Muslims,
Buddhists, and Wiccans, as well as Christians, officials said. (For technical reasons, it is unclear
whether nonbelievers can be protected.) Pentagon sources say the system is
code-named Rapture.
Initial plans call for Rapture components to be hidden
in the steeples of churches, which are about the size and
shape of rockets, and possibly in Catholic cardinals’ miters.
"If we put a Rapture anti-missile missile in every church
steeple in America, even small towns will be defended, and
the spending will be distributed to all congressional
districts," an informed official said. The schedule for
development and construction is uncertain, depending on
how quickly cost overruns can begin.
NO THREAT AT ALL
White House
officials insisted the
system would pose no
threat to the religions of
other nations and said
that leadership at the
Vatican, Constantinople, Mecca, Amritsar, and other key
world-faith sites would be fully briefed on the project.
"However there is some concern about what would happen
if this technology fell into the hands of the Lubavitchers,"
one senior aide said.
While operational details of the system are apparently still being worked out, during an attack
by an ICBM launched by a "rogue state" or possibly by Marc Rich, computers for the faith-based
system would rapidly activate a "prayer circle" of persons who will register with a database as being
willing to pray for national survival.
Automated cell phone and instant-messenger messages
would instruct the persons in the prayer circle on the
altitude, azimuth, velocity, and orbital trajectory of the
incoming threat; they would then employ prayer to guide the
Rapture defensive missiles to the intercept point. "It’s a
pretty cool concept technologically, although there is a
danger of fire when each missile blasts out of its housing in
the steeple," one official said.
STEALTH SCRIPTURE
If we are attacked,
computers for the
faith-based system
would rapidly
activate a "prayer
circle" of persons
who will register
with a database as
being willing to
pray for national
survival.
Critics said the system could be fooled if incoming
warheads were surrounded by a cloud of Torahs, Korans,
Upanishads, and Gospels as decoys.
In secret tests conducted last month on a remote Pacific Ocean island, a
prayer-circle guidance team proved unable to distinguish
between a dummy nuclear warhead and a specially
reinforced hymnal when both were re-entering the
atmosphere at speeds in excess of 8,000 miles per hour.
President Bush also authorized the creation of an Office
of Faith-Based Research and Development at the Pentagon
and named evangelist James Dobson to head the project.
(Lockheed Martin will provide management services.)
Dobson told reporters that he envisioned moving the
Defense Department beyond tanks, fighters, and aircraft
carriers into an entire new generation of faith-based
munitions.
TERRIBLE, SWIFT SWORDS
White House
spokesman Ari
Fleischer said that
George W. Bush
favored changing
the slogan on U.S.
coinage and tender
from "In God We
Trust" to "God
Help Us."
"Lightning and swords will be the weapons of
Armageddon, so America must begin to stockpile the most
lethal, technologically advanced blades and energy-bolt
projectors that our science can design," Dobson said.
"Saddam Hussein isn’t working on plutonium, he is trying to develop seven-headed dragons and gigantic armored locusts. We’re going to have a little surprise ready when he
tries to use them."
Dobson displayed a prototype faith-based infantry
weapon — a gilded staff that, he said, could hurl a powerful
lightning bolt, scorching into powder whatever it was
pointed at. He urged onlookers to try the weapon at a
hastily arranged demonstration range. But when several
reporters attempted to fire the staff, nothing happened.
"That’s because you’re all journalists," Dobson said. "It
only works for believers."
Separately, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said
that George W. Bush favored changing the slogan on U.S.
coinage and tender from "In God We Trust" to "God Help
Us." This phrasing "better reflects the president’s feelings
about the coming four years," Fleischer said.
Gregg Easterbrook is a regular contributor to Slate.
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