John Montgomery  Presents This Week's Creep Logo by Lynn Kauczka

George W Bush I'll Huff and I'll Puff and I'll Blow That Anthrax Away

Isn't it time we had some good news for a change? Wouldn't you like to hear something positive while you're simultaneously microwaving your mail and looking over your shoulder for suspicious looking Arabs? Well, help is on the way. Set your mind at ease. El Presidenté has given us a silver lining to cling to amongst all the dark clouds of the past few weeks: "I don't have anthrax," says George. "I'm confident that when I come to work tomorrow, I'll be safe." That ought to reassure all those paranoid mail carriers who spent the week burying their colleagues, wearing gas masks to work and stuffing themselves with Cipro.

OK, I've had enough. I've kept my mouth (and my typing fingers) quiet for seven weeks. I subscribed to the politically correct mantra that says you support your President during times of crisis. Give the man the benefit of the doubt and see what he does with it. He's the only President we have. Et cetera, yada yada, ad nauseum. My patriotic silence has reached its statute of limitations.

Before 911, I was angry that our President was an idiot who was making a shaky economy worse in order to pay back his wealthy political donors. Today, the anger is gone. Now I'm scared. Am I afraid I'm going to find anthrax sprinkled in with the mounds of fan mail I get? Will fears of suicidal hijacked jets dive bombing into my workplace turn me into a psychotic hermit hiding under the bed for months at a time? Do I think Osama bin Laden will show up at my door armed with a box cutter and a boner? No. Then what am I afraid of? I'm afraid that neither George nor any of his vast band of banshees have even the slightest clue about how to deal with these terrorists who are killing people.

In the seven weeks since this whole mess started, something like 900 people have been arrested and detained. You know how many have been charged with criminal involvement in the World Trade Center, Pentagon or anthrax attacks? Zero. Evidently, the plan is to hold those guys long enough so they start dying off of natural causes, as one of them did in New Jersey this week. Or so they say.

George's top cop, Attorney General John Ashcroft, has an excuse for his lack of progress. John, who can be charitably described as an insanely bigoted, right-wing religious fanatic, insists he needs new powers for his law enforcement troops in the areas of wiretapping, email interception, money laundering and all around big brotherism. You might remind yourself that this demand comes from the party that holds as one of its basic beliefs that the federal government is too powerful and it needs to be made smaller, not larger. George signed the new powers into law this week. Prediction: The first guy thrown in the slammer under these new rules will not be a terrorist, but some lowly web site writer who has the audacity to criticize The World According to John and George.

Hey, here's an excellent idea to fight terrorism: Let's get rid of the overage, overweight, underpaid losers who comprise our airport security workforce. The people scanning your carry on luggage and frisking you with those hand held metal detectors have fewer skills and longer rap sheets than the guys who clean the toilets at Walmart. Why not make them federal agents like the border patrol or the INS? A bipartisan bill to do just that passed the US Senate by a vote of 100-0. Unanimous! They can't even pass a Veteran's Day tribute by 100-0. So it's a done deal, right? Airport Security is a priority, isn't it? "No!" says George. We can't do that! New federal workers might join a union and become Democrats. Then we'd have more infidels for John Ashcroft to fight.

So much for leaving politics out of this.

Well then, how's the war in Afghanistan going? Who the hell knows? We have to rely on George's Defense Department guys for that information, and they sure don't know what's going on. Head Defenseman Donald Rumsfeld said earlier in the week that we may never get Osama after George had promised we'd get him dead or alive. Two days later, Don was back chortling that "Oh yeah, we'll get him. It just might take a long time." VP Dick Cheney stuck his head out of his secret hideaway long enough to tell us that the war may not be over "in our lifetimes." That's a long time. Think how many camels Osama can bugger in our lifetimes.

And in one more example of how this war is going to be harder than we thought, Abdul Haq, one of the Taliban opposition leaders we were counting on to help us over there, got captured and quickly executed this week. Whether he was working with or for the CIA at the time is another piece of unknown information in a large squishy pile of unknowns.

But at least we know George doesn't have anthrax. Makes me want to take these rubber gloves off and shake his hand.