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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: halfscot who wrote (8060)	2/22/1998 8:55:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Respond to of 20981

Another winner by Dowd: February 22, 1998 LIBERTIES / By MAUREEN DOWD The Satan Files Saddam is in his bunker. The pouch from New York has just arrived. It holds what he's been waiting for: the intelligence material from Nizar Hamdoon. Iraq's man at the U.N. has assembled a dossier on what Saddam most needs to know. Who are these American warriors he is facing down? This is 11th-hour opposition research. Now President Anthrax can study the profiles of those who would destroy him. The first file, marked "Satan in the White House," includes a copy of "Leaves of Grass" by an American poet named Whitman. The cover features two naked young men. From Bush, Saddam muses, we get lectures about naked aggression. From Clinton, we just get naked. Hamdoon reports that the Commander in Chief gives this book to all his women. Clinton gave it to that Mossad agent, M. Lewinsky. Saddam notices a poem called "Song of Myself." He likes the sound of it. But the overripe verse is more than he bargains for. Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. Saddam throws the book on the floor. He feels a sudden urge to pluck out the eyes of a camel, strangle a son-in-law or two, lie about the whereabouts of a few germs. Can this be the same America that gave the world Rambo, Dirty Harry and the Terminator? He wonders about the virility of the Clintonites. No wonder they get pushed around by college hippies on CNN! In Baghdad, the questions about Saddam's policies are always friendly. The subject of the next file is Al Gore. It contains a document about young love by a Mossad agent named Erich Segal. Saddam gets engrossed in "Love Story." He delights in the happy ending. There is also a much longer work of fiction called "Earth in the Balance," written by the Vice President. It is gibberish. What is this business about saving wetlands? Saddam likes ozone holes the size of Scud craters. The Mossad agent Gore writes that it has just dawned on him that "Civilization is now capable of destroying itself." Duh, frat boy. Some of us have been working on that for a long time. The next file is about the woman. Saddam learns that Madeleine Albright has worked for Carter, the President who bungled the hostage rescue; Ferraro, the Vice-Presidential candidate who did not know the difference between a "first strike" and a "first use" nuclear attack; and Dukakis, the midget in the tank. Not a disciple of Sun Tzu, Saddam concludes. Mossad Agent Albright doesn't scare him. That big American veteran at Ohio State who told her to "finish the job" over here was much scarier. Saddam moves on to the file of the Secretary of Defense. He looks at the author's photo on one of William Cohen's books of poetry. Cohen stares back at him soulfully, his denim shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Saddam pauses at a poem called "The Wound." At last, some blood and guts from this make-love, not-war crowd. But it turns out to be Cohen's apology to a doe, the mother of a fawn he ran over in Maine. Mother in the woods: STOP staring. Stop waiting. Your child's not coming. Her tail stopped wagging. Let me linger here Amid the tumid ruins Of my after thoughts Alone with the horror That I have wrought. So much fuss about a little collateral damage. Another Cohen poem seems truly promising -- "Terror in the Village." But it's just another wimpy effusion. The poet is not gassing a village. He is merely lamenting the stabbing of a young man in Greenwich Village. Saddam pulls out his gun and shoots the book. He has never been exposed to so many feelings. These Americans are choking on their own sensitivity. It makes him queasy. He is overcome with the desire to annex something or anthrax someone. Saddam is not afraid. The American warriors are so feminine, even the woman. There is only one person at the Pentagon he fears. She is called Linda Tripp. Now there's someone who could trap a tyrant. Allah be praised, she's not working for the Mossad. nytimes.com